Grace Hill: Bringing Services to Low-Income Urban Communities Kansas City, Missouri
As welfare reform requires the poor to become more self-reliant, social service agencies especially jobs programs must improve their outreach. Grace Hill Neighborhood Services in St. Louis, Missouri, is using information technology to accomplish both goals.
Grace Hill, a multi-service United Way agency, won a 1994 TIIAP grant to install touch- screen computers at various community centers and other public places in 11 disadvantaged neighborhoods. Grace Hill arranged for the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to make its resources available to residents over the new computer network. It also sought to use the computers to expand an innovative barter system in which residents had been exchanging services with each other.
Making Jobs Available
By all accounts, the bootstraps project has worked well. For many of the people in the troubled neighborhoods Grace Hill serves, the nearest state employment office is too far away or too intimidating. But the neighborhood computer terminal is easier to reach and less threatening. By installing the computer terminals in accessible community centers, Grace Hill has enabled a significant number of people to take advantage of the state's "Missouri Works" employment-service program a development that has special significance now that Federal law limits how long individuals can collect welfare. Roughly 20 per cent of Grace Hill clients who have tapped into the state maintained job listings had never registered previously to use the employment service. And about 10 per cent of the registrants have gone on to land jobs.
The growth of Grace Hill's barter system, called the "Time Dollar Exchange," has been even more impressive. In 1994, the year before the system was computerized, Grace Hill brokered an estimated 26,000 exchanges. Clients who wished to participate had to go to one of Grace Hill's 10 offices to participate. Grace Hill staff recorded what services they were offering whether running errands, providing transportation, taking care of children for working parents, or doing household or automobile repairs on hand-written index cards, searched the files for offers involving services donor needed, and kept track of the various exchanges. For donors, an hour's work earned a right to claim an hour's worth of services.
Since it was computerized, the system has expanded substantially. By 1996, with the computer system enabling people to record their own offers and find the services they need at 40 locations rather than Grace Hill's 10 offices, there were some 60,000 exchanges, more than double the previous number, according to Renee Richardson, Director of the Exchange Program. An estimated 5,000 people now participate in the barter system.
These gains have come at no additional cost to Grace Hill. "We're serving a lot more people, but I haven't had to hire any additional staff," says Richardson.
People Helping People
Richardson attributes the success of the employment program partly to the fact that Grace Hill work stations are closer and more convenient for many of the people in the neighborhoods being served. An even more important factor, however, may be the human part of the equation: Grace Hill trains volunteers to help community members use the computer system, and when a client sees a job he or she wants to pursue, a volunteer contacts the employment service, gets more details and helps the job seeker arrange an interview all without requiring the client to leave his or her own neighborhood.
While the state employment office can seem impersonal and overwhelming to some people, the volunteer mentors make the Grace Hill system friendly and approachable, Richardson says. "There's never a fear that you're being judged by a staff person."
Even some of the program's biggest problems are really a sign of its success. The mentors, who receive 40 hours of hands-on computer training, have a tendency to move on quickly to paying jobs in the private sector. As a result, "We've had to train about twice as many mentors as we had planned," says Richard Gram, Grace Hill's Executive Director.
Gram envisions providing even more resources over the work stations in the future. The city of St. Louis, which provided funds for an additional 12 work stations, now provides information about city services over the network. The system eventually will carry information on public transit routes and schedules. In addition, other agencies frequently used by Grace Hill's clientele will be added to the database, and efforts are underway to develop software that will show users the location of other agencies they may want to visit in person.
Richard Gram
Executive Director
(314) 539-9510
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications
Last Modified: 18 Dec 97