Officials are seeing a high success rate from the county’s partnership with a Baltimore not-for-profit that provides local homeless people insight into the problems that caused their homelessness and help to solve them.
The county is working with the Helping Up Mission to voluntarily relocate homeless clients from Manatee County to a Baltimore shelter to complete a yearlong substance abuse recovery program, then return to the county, Manatee County Commissioner Amanda Ballard told the Bradenton City Council on May 27.
Bradenton has a large share of the county’s homeless population due to the Salvation Army’s location in the city on 14th Street. But the program benefits all of Manatee County, not just Bradenton, Mayor Gene Brown said.
“We are all Manatee County residents and taxpayers,” he said.
The program is funded through the county’s opioid litigation settlement funds and other federal resources, said Ballard, an attorney who formerly worked as a child welfare attorney. With the funds, the county can offer long-term substance abuse treatment at no cost to the clients or county taxpayers, she said.
About 80% of the homeless population has substance abuse or mental health issues, Ballard said, adding that simply finding housing is not a solution without addressing the underlying issues.
The aim of the yearlong program is to help clients “get to the bottom of what caused you to use substances in the first place,” she said.
“Our approach is treatment first, determining what caused the abuse,” she said.
Calling it a “unique innovation,” Ballard told the city council the program offers clinical services from the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Program participants are expected to take part in substance abuse rehabilitation, work at the program site cooking meals, sweeping floors and doing other household tasks, and get their GEDs if they did not finish high school.
Manatee County pays a $1,200 program fee per client and pays for flights to and from Baltimore. Two outreach workers find and screen potential clients who would benefit from the program and reconnect eight months into the program to assist with housing and jobs upon their return.
The success rate is 64%, which Ballard called “immense” in the substance abuse world, adding that one client now works as a program assistant at Under One Roof, a Manatee County women’s shelter that acts as a gateway for the Helping Up Mission program.
The Helping Up Mission may eventually offer long-term treatment at Under One Roof in Manatee County, Ballard said.
Cindy Lane is a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Beacons. She can be reached at clane@tbnweekly.com.