Five Questions With: Benedict F. Lessing Jr.

"In addition, more than 80 people daily are served in our homeless shelter, where families get support to help them transition to permanent housing. "

Ben Lessing has served as the president and CEO of Community Care Alliance since July 1 of 2014 when Family Resources Community Action, a community action agency and family service nonprofit, and NRI Community Services, a community mental health center, merged. Lessing had served as the executive director of Family Resources Community Action from 2000 until the merger. The nonprofit now provides human services support for mental health, housing and basic needs, addictions, trauma, child well-being, education and employment. The agency offers more than 50 programs and serves more than 15,000 annually. Here, Lessing discusses the integration of and demand for services.

PBN: It has been a year since the merger. What is the most striking change in the way the agency now functions?
LESSING:
Communication and service-related coordination and planning has increased markedly; we see this improving every month. As staff continue to learn about the scope and array of resources at their disposal, they are using them more and more to better support and empower families and individuals in assisting them to achieve their desired outcomes.

PBN: How effective has it been to integrate mental health, trauma and related services with employment, education, housing and other service needs?
LESSING:
It has been extremely effective. The theory behind the merger has been that broader continuums of services that are integrated allow for serving people comprehensively. The reality is that the majority of the people we serve are challenged with multiple concerns in their lives that impact their long term well-being.
Empirically, we see examples of this daily across the organization where clients are being assisted in addressing needs such as housing, addiction and child welfare concurrently in a coordinated manner. Also, persons with severe and persistent mental illness that have young children are accessing our array of early childhood services, assuring that developmental milestones are being met and that these parents acquire the necessary skills to nurture their children. As an organization, Community Care Alliance now has the ability to be more responsive and comprehensive to population needs in a manner that had not occurred previously.

PBN: What are the biggest human services needs in Woonsocket and how are you addressing them?
LESSING:
Deep and persistent poverty is a consistent concern in Woonsocket. More than 35 percent of children under age 5 reside at or below the federal poverty level. As such, unemployment is significant subsequent to the loss of manufacturing over several decades. Given the economic challenges facing many families, trauma, child neglect, addiction and mental illness play a significant role.
Through our Family Support Center, we work with over 4,000 families and individuals to address their basic needs specific to homelessness prevention, utility assistance, food concerns and referrals to employment training and other services. This past year, we also provided income tax preparation assistance to over 1,200 households, returning more than $1.6 million to the local community including $625,000 in Earned Income Tax Credits. Many working families rely on these refunds to pay for basic needs such as rent, food, transportation and clothing for children.
In addition, more than 80 people daily are served in our homeless shelter, where families get support to help them transition to permanent housing. Our Financial Opportunity Center works with families and individuals to increase their assets by improving financial literacy, job training and becoming employed.
Where mental health services are concerned, we are in the process of establishing a broader continuum of recovery services with levels of care that can be customized to individual needs. This includes everything from office-based outpatient resources, intensive outpatient services, partial hospitalization, case management, peer support and health home teams providing community outreach.
In addition, our emergency services team works closely with staff throughout the agency to stabilize clients in the community. The agency’s acute stabilization unit provides an alternative to more expensive hospital-based inpatient care for stabilizing adults.
We are also working closely with Thundermist Health Center to develop methods for strategically integrating our services to better serve people with behavioral health and primary care needs. This partnership will also focus on reducing the unnecessary utilization of emergency room and hospital utilization.

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PBN: In what ways have volunteers been involved with the agency?
LESSING:
Employees from area companies have organized drives to collect personal care products, diapers and other items needed by families living in the Woonsocket Shelter and other programs, and toy drives to ensure children from low-income families have gifts for the holidays.
Company employees also have assisted with landscaping, painting and cleaning some of our program buildings.
Youth groups from schools, churches and other community organizations have also coordinated drives for food and other needs, and have helped out in the community garden. Individual volunteers have been involved in a number of ways including organizing food distribution bags at our Family Support Center, assisting with the Agape Center (HIV/AIDS Support) Food pantry and meal preparation, and helping to serve clients through our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. Volunteers are also involved in helping with our special events. The individuals and families we serve have many needs. We welcome and appreciate the assistance of volunteers to support the work we do.

PBN: What are your plans for growth as a single agency in the years ahead?
LESSING
: We will continue to diversify our array of practical services to better serve the local population in Woonsocket and throughout Northern Rhode Island.
Our continued focus will be to empower people to acquire the skills and supportive relationships in the community to improve their economic and emotional well-being. One example is a merger we recently completed with a Woonsocket-based organization providing literacy services called Project Learn. The founder and executive director of this unique organization developed evidence-based programs to address the needs of individuals with low-literacy and often undiagnosed learning disorders. As part of our continuum, Project Learn will strengthen our efforts to serve people comprehensively as people with low literacy or learning difficulties often feel pushed to the margins of the community.
The other point we believe is critical is that no organization is an island. While we will continue working to serve people comprehensively because we believe empirically that is what works, we will need other partners in order to achieve this practice objective. This has been a huge problem in Rhode Island and one reason why individuals and families that come in contact with the human service system have seen it as fragmented and broken.
Coming full circle, this has been the rationale for creating Community Care Alliance. Whereas many mergers and consolidations are often about acquisition, this one has been about creating an organizational practice model that underscores the value and dignity of the people we serve.

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