Families get help with flood recovery plans

Seven flood-displaced Cedar Rapids families have received help from a new program, and organizers are looking for volunteers to help dozens, maybe scores, more.

“We're trying to build up these families once again,” said Dave Loy, project coordinator for the Partnership for Safe Families.

Loy runs the partnership's Flood Affected Support Team program, funded with a $24,202 grant from the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation. FAST staff - so far, Loy and AmeriCorps worker Jessie Courtney - meet with families still struggling to regain their footing more than a year after the flood.

The model for FAST is the partnership's role in “family team meetings” with families involved in the state's child welfare system. Workers organize and moderate meetings between parents of at-risk children, state child-protection workers, counselors, and staff from agencies that can provide support services to produce a step-by-step plan for parents to regain custody of their children.

“It just kind of clicked with me that it would be really good to use this same kind of process” to help families recover from the flood, Loy said.

Since July, he has facilitated seven FAST meetings with representatives from such agencies as Iowa Legal Aid, Horizons, HACAP and the Matthew 25 Ministry.

“I felt like there was no hope,” said Becky, a single mother who didn't want to be fully identified out of fear of an abusive former spouse. “I didn't have the resources or the funds to do anything.”

Becky and her two children have shared an apartment with her ailing father since being flooded out of their rented home in the Time Check neighborhood. Laid off from her job this spring, Becky found a larger home to rent, but her car is broken down, she lacks a vehicle to make the move and she needs some furniture for the new place.

Becky's Aug. 25 FAST meeting produced a three-page plan to move her family toward financial and emotional stability, Loy located a rental truck at a discount, and Becky has enrolled in a financial counseling program and received two estimates to repair her car's transmission. The partnership agreed to pay Becky's $25 enrollment fee at Kaplan University, where she'll gain skills for a new job.

“I feel there's people out there that want to help me, and now I have light at the end,” Becky said,

Loy wants to expand the program to both families and service providers. He also figures there are more than enough households in need of support to exceed the goal of 60.

To that end, FAST will hold a 12-hour training program in Cedar Rapids Sept. 25 through 27. Volunteer facilitators will be eligible for a stipend to cover expenses. Loy estimates volunteers will spend about six hours planning and following up on each FAST session.

For more information or to register for training, call Loy or Courtney at the Partnership for Safe Families, (319) 286-0773.