If you're homeless, this guide will help. While living on the streets can be hard and scary, the simple and effective skills in this guide will help you survive and even thrive. Finding food and shelter, knowing what to do in bad weather, where to hang out, how to be safe, how to make money, and how to take care of your emotional and mental well-being are a few skills talked about.
Brianna Karp entered the workforce at age ten, supporting her mother and sister throughout her teen years in Southern California. Although her young life was scarred by violence and abuse, Karp stayed focused on her dream of a steady job and a home of her own. By age twenty-two her dream became reality. Karp loved her job as an executive assistant and signed the lease on a tiny cottage near the beach. And then the Great Recession hit. Karp, like millions of others, lost her job. In the six months between the day she was laid off and the day she was forced out onto the street, Karp scrambled for temp work and filed hundreds of job applications, only to find all doors closed. When she inherited a thirty-foot travel trailer after her father's suicide, Karp parked it in a Walmart parking lot and began to blog about her search for work and a way back.
"Homelessness is a perennial topic of concern at libraries. In fact, staff at public libraries interact with almost as many homeless individuals as staff at shelters do. In this book Dowd, executive director of a homeless shelter, spotlights best practices drawn from his own shelter's policies and training materials" --
THE BEST ILLUSTRATED GUIDE ON HOW TO SURVIVE WHILE BEING HOMELESS! What exactly is being homeless? What is a home? Is shelter a home? Is a structure a home? If you are renting a structure to stay in, are you homeless? If you have a thirty-year mortgage on a house, are you homeless? Do you own a house? Do you own some type of shelter? Do you own the land that your house sits upon? If you miss a payment, are you homeless These are questions that flow through the minds of many people every day. Homelessness is a very complicated subject. But the reality is, homelessness is a mindset. For me, home is where the heart is. For me, a home can be a tent, camper, car, trailer, apartment, house, mansion, castle or anything that provides shelter. There is no right way nor wrong way to have a home. I've created this book as a helpful guide for those who may find themselves amongst the path less traveled. This book contains many great hacks, hints, options, and ways to make the most out of everything.
This book provides social workers, outreach clinicians, case managers, and concerned community members with a pretreatment guide for assisting homeless couples, youth, and single adults. The inter-relationship between Homeless Outreach and Housing First is examined in detail to inform program development and hands on practice. "Pretreatment Guide for Homeless Outreach & Housing First" shares five detailed case studies from the field to elucidate effective ways of helping and to demonstrate how the most vulnerable among us can overcome trauma and homelessness. Readers will:ÿ ÿ * Expand their assessment skills and discover new interventions for helping people who have experienced long-term or chronic homelessness.ÿ ÿ *ÿUnderstand and be able to integrate the stages of common language construction with their own practice.ÿ ÿ *ÿLearn about the positive measurable impact of a Housing First approach and its moral, fiscal, and quality of life implications.ÿ ÿ *ÿUnderstand how to better integrate program policy and supervision with Homeless Outreach & Housing First initiatives.ÿ ÿ *ÿLearn how to utilize a Pretreatment Approach with couples, youth, and unaccompanied adults experiencing untreated major mental illness and addiction.ÿ "Jay S. Levy's book is essential reading to both people new to the movement to end homelessness and folks who have been in the trenches for many years. Learn how to do effective outreach with the chronic homeless population, and the ins and outs of the Housing First model. The personal stories and the success cases will give inspiration to work even harder to help both individuals and for ending homelessness in your community." Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing National Coalition for the Homeless, Washington, DC Learn more at www.JaySLevy.com Another empowering book from Loving Healing Press www.LovingHealing.com
Advocating a strategic approach, this book shows how to form a plan, secure funding and support, and create effective programs for adults, children, and youth who are experiencing homelessness. You'll find guidance for creating partnerships, training staff, and advocating. Taking a holistic approach that will help you to better understand the experience of homelessness within the context of your library community, this book offers new strategies and tools for addressing the challenge of meeting the needs of the entire community, including those who are unstably housed. With basic facts, statistics, and conversations about homelessness, the author makes a case for why libraries should provide support, explains exactly which needs they may be able (or unable) to meet, and shows how this support can be a natural part of the library services you already provide. Topics discussed include trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and mental and physical health challenges; brief stories and concrete examples illustrate the principles and guidelines discussed. Citing innovative services such as Dallas Public Library's "coffee and conversation" program and San Francisco Public Library's social worker program, the book offers both food for thought and tools for action as public librarians strive to understand and meet the needs of a population that has traditionally been stereotyped and excluded.
This book presents an unflinching investigation of homelessness in the United States—a problem that has been with us since the arrival of the first English settlers nearly 400 years ago. The terms historically used to describe them include "bums," "hoboes," "migrants," "street people," "transients," "tramps," and "vagrants." Just as varied as the words we have used to describe them are the reasons many people have found themselves living in the land of opportunity without permanent residence. The book considers homelessness and its distinctive character in three periods of American history: the era of tramps and hoboes in the late 1800s–early 1900s, the era of transients and migrants in the 1930s, and the era of homeless and "street" people in the last 40 years. It clarifies the multiple meanings of the word "homeless" today and demonstrates that homelessness is a symptom of more than one problem, leading to confusion about the issue of homelessness and hampering attempts to reduce its occurrence. Author Neil Larry Shumsky, PhD, also postulates that the treatment of homelessness in England before the colonization of North America laid the foundation of pervasive American attitudes and practices.
A case-based, clinical guide applicable to a variety of settings, this book offers evidence-based expert advice on the difficult challenges inherent in working with underserved homeless populations. The American Association of Community Psychiatrists' Clinical Guide to the Treatment of the Mentally Ill Homeless Person is a concise, practical work that gives busy clinicians the information they need; it not only is more up-to-date than existing publications, but also offers case- and site-based content that provides more hands-on, practical advice. Written by clinicians, for clinicians, it offers approaches to therapy and rehabilitation from the vantage point of the treatment environment, from street to housing and everything in between. The book reflects approaches to the clinical care of homeless people refined over two decades, building not only on the work of academic research but more importantly on the firsthand experience of clinicians. Its organization by treatment setting or specific subpopulation allows readers quick access to the chapters most relevant to their work. The first five chapters follow a sequence of naturalistic settings -- such as shelters and the work of Assertive Community Treatment Teams -- that demonstrate a model of engagement, intensive care, and ongoing rehabilitation. Subsequent chapters define specific scenarios that depict patients at various points on the engagement-rehabilitation continuum. Each chapter contains a clinical case example; guides to differential diagnosis, treatment planning, and accessing entitlements; and a flow chart for rehabilitation, including opportunities for student/resident or community involvement. The book emphasizes: A real-world orientation that provides a nuts-and-bolts approach to such cases as families, homeless children, veterans -- even individuals in rural settings. Cases that enable readers to follow the progress of individuals as they progress through the network of care. The importance of Assertive Community Treatment and "housing first" models of rehabilitation. Data supporting the importance of Critical Time Intervention, particularly with regard to homeless families. Examples of clinical interviewing techniques for engagement and treatment of challenging individuals who are being seen in community settings. These illustrated techniques can be incorporated into educational curricula. This is an indispensable resource for any mental health professional working with homeless populations and is also useful for medical students' clinical rotation in community psychiatric settings. Its examples of clinically engaging the homeless person are equally instructive for teaching interviewing skills to any professionals -- whether in law enforcement, social work, substance abuse treatment, or the clergy -- who encounter these forgotten members of society.
SOMETIMES THE WORLD SEEMS LIKE A VERY DARK PLACE. In this angry world, I have seen a glimpse of light. I have seen kindness, love and hope at a homeless shelter. Siloam Mission is named after a pool where, in Biblical times, Jesus healed a blind man. In this tradition, the Mission has a medical clinic, and I have had the privilege of working there. The homeless men and women I have met at Siloam have taught me profound lessons about perseverance through suffering, expressing joy in dire circumstances, and the rewards of service to those in need. I want to share those lessons with you.
The Book on Ending Homelessness provides insights for those in the industry, elected officials, policy makers, funders, public servants and the general public on the best ways to move from managing homelessness to ending homelessness. While ending homelessness may seem to be a whacky or even preposterous idea, Iain De Jong takes more than two decades of experience as an award winning industry leader to lay out how and why homelessness can be ended in very practical ways. This book will provoke and teach, serving as both inspiration and an instruction manual for those serious about combatting one of the most important social issues of our time. The book will reshape how you think about homelessness, as well as how strategies like sheltering, street outreach and day services all play a role in ending homelessness when operated with a housing-focused lens and the right service orientation. No doubt the book will reassure some that their thinking and actions regarding homelessness are bang on, while challenging others to think and respond differently in what they do and how they invest their money. Many of the ideas in the book elaborate upon ideas that Iain shares in his blog, keynote speeches and conference presentations, as well as the training series that Iain and his team have been offering for the past decade. If you are involved in homelessness issues or concerned about homelessness, this book is essential reading.
