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Greetings from Barre AHS
 
Thank you for visiting our AHS website. Since the beginning of 2008, we've made significant progress in a number of areas.  First, we've strengthened our efforts to support children and youth through a more focused system of care.  We've developed a set of shared goals and objectives and implemented a number of strategies to meet those goals.  The result of all of this work will be a system of care that does it's best to serve the needs of our children and youth, and their families. 
Second, we've completed our planning work for a renewed effort around housing.  Our commitment is to do whatever we can to make sure the people we serve have stable housing.  We encourage people in search of housing to visit our Rental Opportunity Center at 107 North Main Street, Barre (2nd floor above the Merchants Bank).  We're open on Tuesdays from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon.  Additional hours may be added as demand increases.  Our center is a "one-stop shopping" effort where people can apply for all of the area housing programs and speak with someone about those programs.  Our Housing Now plan is posted on this website, feel free to call or write with your comments or questions.
Lastly, we will miss Cindy Miller, our field services specialist, who is leaving our office in June.  Cindy has been enormously helpful in so many areas such as supporting people through navigation and direct services and developing this website, among many other things.  Good Luck, Cindy!
Don’s Photo
Don Mandelkorn, Field Director
Don.Mandelkorn@ahs.state.vt.us
802-479-7594

As of June 19, 2008, the on-line training calendar will not be updated, although there are events listed through to the end of 2008. If you have questions or want to be added to the bi-monthly listing of training, professional development and learning opportunties, contact don.mandelkorn@ahs.state.vt.us  

The conference registration lines are now open!! See our conference brochure on-line. If you're registering, you can also go to http://robie.info/bulletinboard/ for information about car-pooling to Killington the day of the conference. We're going to have another exciting conference. Jane Middelton-Moz will be our keynoter and we'll have opening remarks by Cindy LaWare, secretary of the VT Agency of Human Services. Click into the conference section and you'll find the nominating procedures for the John Burchard "Spirit of Collaboration" Award. We look forward to seeing you on October 17, 2008 at the Killington Grand Hotel.  

Take a look at our local plan designed to improve our work participation rates and see our progress toward achieving that goal.  Reach-up is designed to support parents with low income by providing cash assistance, job placement, education and training, support services delivered through a case management approach.  

We've designed a plan to reduce the rate of incarceration for women and to develop strategies to successfully support women returning to the community. 

This strategy brings all of our state eligibility services to women while they are still in jail.  The goal is to initiate the eligibility and application process so when the woman is released, it can be as little as hours in which benefits can be delivered rather than weeks.  Having benefits in place upon release will greatly support the woman's effort to successfully re-enter community and family life.

The Deter Project is designed to provide substance abuse/mental health assessments for women while still in jail but on the verge of release as well using a collaborative, interdisciplinary team approach to achieve positive outcomes. We're seeing pretty dramatic results for women from our community. 

In 2008, we're focusing our energy on improving our response to meeting the emergency, transitional and supportive housing needs in our central Vermont community.  Our Housing Now plan addresses many of the issues we currently face.

If you want to join the effort, you can become a member of our local Continuum of Care team (currently meets monthly on the second Monday from 10:00 am to noon at the Vermont Community Land Trust office at 107 North Main Street, Barre).

If you're in need of housing information or are working with someone who's facing a housing crisis, visit our Rental Opportunity Center (ROC) on Tuesdays from 10:00 am to noon, also at the Land Trust offices in Barre.

Since October of 2007, a group of local leaders have been meeting to better organize our local system of care for children and youth.  The impetus for this work has been the Interagency Agreement between the Department of Education and the Agency of Human Services as well as our shared commitment to do what we can to support children and families.

"The Mission of the Vermont Military Family & Community Network is to develop and maintain a multi-group community network amongst the community, government and private sectors that creates an awareness of programs and provides services to all returning service members and their families." 

As a national learning site through the Casey Family Programs Breakthrough Series, our local team is developing strategies  to achieve educational stability and improve the educational outcomes for children and youth in out of home care.  The Breakthrough Series uses a model for rapid systems change relying on incremental, finite and smaller ideas for change.

The Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger and the Northfield Savings Bank, have initiated a collaborative within Washington County who's mission is to end childhood hunger in our community.  This campaign will provide our community with an understanding of existing anti-hunger services and provide stakeholders with the expertise and support that will enable us to address local hunger issues in a more comprehensive and systemic fashion.

  • Emergency Preparedness Planning