Program Description - reStart provides emergency shelter and assistance to single men and women, families with children and unaccompanied youth ages 12-18. Our Overnight Emergency Shelter for 50 men and 33 women each night provides shelter, shower, meals, case management, emergency assistance, medical and mental health screenings. The Family Emergency Shelter provides shelter, meals, counseling, employment and housing case management services for 15 families for up to 30 days. The reStart Youth Emergency Shelter offers a program for runaway and homeless youth (ages 12-18) who are neither in foster care nor in the juvenile justice system which includes shelter and street outreach. The Youth Emergency Shelter houses up to 6 male and 4 female youth for up to 15 days. The Street Outreach Program goes to the street to engage homeless or high-risk youth in Kansas City’s urban core and provide food, clothing, chance for shelter, hygiene kits, and referrals.

Program Category - Emergency Shelter - Housing

Target Population Served - Homeless, Poor/Economically Disadvantaged, Indigent, General

Program long-term success defined - Our emergency shelters provides the first step for homeless persons in order to re-establish a stable living condition. Our hope is to provide supportive services to our guests so that they will not become homeless again. For the families and single adults, we provide counseling and other programs that will help them achieve stability and become productive and independent. For our youth emergency program we hope to eliminate generational homelessness by intervening in the homeless population at an early age and helping to curb behavior and risk factors, as well as identify physical and/or mental and emotional problems in that younger age group that lead to chronic homelessness.

Program short-term success defined - The immediate goal of the single adults and families with children is to provide shelter and support to keep families off the streets. The immediate goal of the emergency shelter is to resolve family conflict so that the youth can return to their home or match them up with community services so that they can gain self-sufficiency.

Program success monitored by - Outcomes are reported and tabulated via several vehicles, 1. Internal program progress reports, 2. external reporting annually to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and bi-annually to Health and Human Services, 3. MAACLink Homeless Management System Database of the Mid America Assistance Coalition, and 4. RHYMIS homeless youth tracking system. Information is input on a regular basis via survey and other reporting vehicles and weekly updates for each case manager for each of the programs.

Examples or evidence of program success - In 2006, we provided 84,930 nights of shelter to 5,334 individuals; this included 626 children and youth. Each day, more than 450 people come to reStart for food, shelter and support. Currently, over 90% of the families who enter our transitional housing program come through the Emergency Family Shelter. Over half of those families in our transitional housing achieve permanent housing. Our Youth shelter provided housing for 61 youth in 2006 and hotline calls are taken 24 hours a day.