To those interested ...

LOW INCOME PEOPLE’S WISDOM COUNCIL REPORT

The Community Action Advisory Committee (CAAC) of the Human Services Commission (HSC) engaged the services of The Wisdom Council Project (WCP) to organize a focus group of Lane County citizens who use social services. After several meetings with the CAAC and HSC staff, four three-hour sessions were scheduled for January 20-21. With assistance from CAAC, WCP undertook to organize selection of participants, securing a site for the meetings and arranging the logistics to accommodate the needs of the participants for transportation, meals, childcare, and communications.

Process and Challenges

Key elements of the Wisdom Council Process that were not possible to apply in this circumstance include identification of a coherent target group, pre-education of the group about the process and chartering of the process by the target population. At the advice of the CAAC, the Service Provider community was not included in the organizing process except as a vehicle to distribute flyers to members of the target population.

Flyers were created that described the intent of the process and invited self identified "low income people"
to apply to be part of a pool from which the participants would be randomly selected. Flyers were distributed at service provider offices and other public locations. An article published in The Other Paper and a radio interview on KLCC were also employed to get information out to the public. Forty one applications to participate were received. A random drawing from these yielded 17 participants who could commit to being available for the full four sessions over two days.

Results

The final consensus "Statement of the Lane County Low Income People’s Wisdom Council" has been previously submitted, however, here are the impressions of the WCP facilitators and organizers.

Every participant had numerous experiences to recount of how difficult it was for them to use the services that are available. Those recorded comments with specific references to service providers have been provided to the CAAC for their use.

Three issues seem to have emerged as needing further attention.
1. If the system is intended to help these people move out of poverty, and into main-stream life, it is not working. Instead they feel trapped in a life style that merely maintains them in their current condition. An example offered by one single parent participant is having to pay $5.00/hr for child care while earning $6.50/hr at her job.
2. There is a sense of living in a different world than the rest of society; that even those who are trying to help don’t understand how it is for them and treat them as a problem they wish would just go away. It is the inefficiency and outright callousness in their interactions with service providers that they point to in support of this assertion.
3. They want to help themselves get out of poverty and can be quite creative in solving their challenges if given support. It is essential that they be involved in the process and decisions that determine how to best help them. Their commitment to creating a Low Income People's Advocacy Center is a manifestation of how they can participate in partnership with the current system.


Observations and Recommendations

There is an opportunity to really involve the Low Income Community in solving the problems they see as well as those experienced by the Human Services Commission and the service providers.

The immediate opportunity is for the CAAC to assist the group of participants in creating and organizing the LIP Advocacy Center or at least participate in creating or modifying an existing service that addresses their concerns. An investment in further dialogue could have a significant pay-off.

While the issues raised by this group may have been heard before, perhaps it is because they have yet to be addressed that they reoccur. In the long run, a regular intra-community dialogue process can lead to solutions with the broadest community support and likelihood of working.

We recommend that the Wisdom Council Process be repeated twice each year. That it be opened to participation from the full spectrum of the advocacy community including service providers, public agencies, and at large citizens. After all, poverty and its consequences affects all citizens of Lane County.

The Wisdom Council Project appreciates the opportunity afforded us to participate in this effort and looks forward to being of further assistance.

Coheartedly,
THE WISDOM COUNCIL PROJECT



Adin H. Rogovin
Director