Group to expand services

TORRINGTON – Over the past few years, Goshen HELP and its Executive Director Kyle Borger have worked to end hunger and poverty in Goshen County through a food pantry and case management services, and if all goes well, the non-profit will be able to help families in five other counties starting in October.
Goshen HELP is aiming to be a central hub for case management for families in Carbon, Crook, Niobrara, Washakie and Weston Counties, and it would be made possible by the Community Services Block Grant. The CSBG is administered through the US Department of Health and Human Services and exists to provide funds to alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty in communities.
If all goes well in the application process – and Borger said he believes it will – Goshen HELP will be helping address the root causes of poverty in those counties, just like it has done in Goshen County. While GH won’t food pantries in the other counties, they will benefit from the non-profit’s case management services.
“The grant has a lot of potential,” Borger said. “Since it is a block grant it is available to provide resources to local communities to figure out for themselves how to address the cause of the poverty. For many CSBG grantees it has been used to provide short-term financial aid. Somebody would apply to the program for rent assistance, utility assistance, maybe even medical payments. They would get up to a certain dollar amount, and if they qualified by the grant’s terms, the bill would be paid.”

The issue with that model, he said, is that recipients can become dependent on the assistance. Instead of searching out resources to better their overall position, they would just budget for the money.
“That was essentially the extent of it,” he said. “That doesn’t address the cause.”
“We’re actually going to work with them to discover what life would look like if they didn’t need help on a regular basis. How do we get there? What’s the next step? Do you need different housing? Do you need more income? Do you need education? What is it that you need to get there?”
Goshen HELP will not have a physical presence in those counties, but would deliver services through the phone or videoconferencing. GH would expand locally by increasing existing staff hours and hiring two new part-time case managers.
The expanded service area would allow those other counties, many of which just had an application system for the grant funds, to take advantage of the structure GH has built.
Goshen HELP’s mission will be to help people facing poverty connect with the necessary resources to make a permanent change.
“If we don’t have the resources, we try to find and partner with others who do have the resources,” he said.
“We want to make sure they are using all of the benefits that are available through the state programs. We’re making sure they’re getting all of the assistance that they need, but also helping them move toward a different reality.”