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Hamilton House Community Resource Center strives to address family needs

Times Record - 11/28/2018

Nov. 28--For local families with certain needs, the Hamilton House Community Resource Center may be able to help.

Kim Whorton, resource coordinator for the community resource center, said the purpose of the center is to try to meet the more intensive needs of families. Its first day in operation was Jan. 16.

The center at 2705 B Oak Lane in Van Buren was created when Hamilton House advocates were finding that families needed more than advocacy, more than the organization could provide, Hamilton House Founder and Executive Director Jackie Hamilton said. Hamilton House started looking for a place to provide other services, which resulted in the resource center.

"That's what drove our, I guess, desire to open a resource center, because we wanted to meet the need," Hamilton said. "I mean ... if you really think about it, (it) doesn't do a lot of good to provide therapy and advocacy and other services if someone doesn't have a bed to sleep in, or someone doesn't have enough food for their family. They tend to focus on their greatest need at the moment, and so we wanted to provide a place where we can refer them, or they can refer themselves."

Hamilton said while others in the community use the resource center as well, it is primarily designed for the families who come through Hamilton House.

Whorton said the first component of what the resource center does is connect people with resources.

"If someone needs a box of food, or they need to know where to go to some sort of support group, or ... they need a bed for their house or any kind of thing like that that's a resource that's out in the community, they want to get their GED and they don't know how to do that, or they want to enroll in college and they don't know how to do that, any kind of thing that a person needs, we will connect them to the resources that are already available in the community," Whorton said.

The second component of what the resource center does, Whorton said, is try to meet needs that perhaps nobody in the community is doing. It holds classes pertaining to subjects such as parenting and coparenting, as well as daily living skills, such as budgeting, hygiene, household management, cooking economically and nutrition.

The resource center also has a life/recovery coaching program.

"That's for people who maybe they have issues that they're recovering from, and that can be like drugs and alcohol, or it can also be just life circumstances that they're working through that they need that little extra help, where we can help them with goal setting, we can help them to look for the different things that would help them in their individual situations," Whorton said. "And then we can talk to them about all the different issues that they have, all the different services that they need, all the different information that they need."

The resource center also has a support group for victims of domestic violence and offers individual case management. In explaining the latter, Whorton said if someone is working with the Department of Human Services, and they have their case plan of what they are supposed to do to get their children back or keep them in their home, but they are having trouble meeting those goals, the resource center can sit down with the person and help him or her figure out how to meet them.

"Just one-on-one advocacy, any kind of issue that they're going through, just sitting down with them, doing a needs assessment, figuring out what their needs are and helping them to address all of those needs," Whorton said.

There are no specific requirements for people to obtain the services provided by the resource center, Whorton said. All the services are free of charge. The center takes referrals from the Hamilton House, Western Arkansas Counseling & Guidance Center, DHS and other agencies. As of the last day of September, the resource center has provided 578 services to 79 people.

People can contact the Hamilton House Community Resource Center via telephone at (479) 471-5980 or via email at resourcecenter@hhsafetycenter.org.

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(c)2018 Times Record (Fort Smith, Ark.)

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