It is often difficult to track down information on food programs and resources in CT. To make things easier for everybody in GNH Community, I have added quite a bit of content to the GNH Community group on Food Security.You will be able to find the new SNAP guidelines, a detailed outline of the program, links to useful resources online, links to the applications, a FAQ and a space to ask questions to the experts at CAHS. In addition, as an added bonus, I added a GoogleMap with the food pantries available in the GNH area.How I did it? It is pretty easy. There is a tutorial on my blog; the post is in the front page. We should work to get information, events and calendars available for everyone to make GNH as useful as it can get.As usual, call me or e-mail me if you have any questions, and please, please, please share GNH Community with others - especially if the they have questions about Food Stamps/ SNAP!
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I just got an e-mail with an opening for a full time bi-lingual home visitor for our Nurturing Families Program at FHCHC, asking me to redistribute it to my list of contacts. Instead of doing that, I am going to post it here, showing how we can do it.The easiest way to do it (and I expect to see a lot of those postings soon!) is via a blog post, that will come up on the front page. To create one, just have a look at the box at the top of the right column in the front page, just under your name. It has links to your inbox, alerts, friends, and a drop box at the bottom that says "Quick Add...".Click on there, and select "blog post". A little window will open, and there you can type a blog post giving news, explaining what is going on, or posting some document. If you want to do that, click on "more options" at the bottom; you will get to another screen when you can bold text, add links and photos, and (the last icon on the right - looks like a sheet of paper) add files.That´s what I did, and just looked on my documents on my computer for the file, selected it, and here it is. A job description.FHCHC NF Home Visitor.docI would ask you to share it with your mailing list, but I won´t. Better ask them to join GNH Community so they can check it out here.
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It is there, on the top left corner. Under GNH, between Main and My Page. It is the most important button right now, as it what we can use to grow our network. Basically we send a friendly e-mail to people we know and should join GNH community - with a convenient link and all.We all know no one reads e-mails anymore, so we should keep it brief and to the point. Here goes a proposed text:"Dear friend,One of the issues that always come up when talking with people in the non-profit community is that we don´t talk enough to each other. We always have clients that we can help but we don´t know where to send, because we haven´t heard of what others are doing or we missed the news on the new program that is available down the street.To try to correct that a group of non-profits in New Haven have created a online community so we can share news and keep in touch. The site is free and very easy to use; like a Facebook but only for case workers and non profits in the Greater New Haven Area. I will like you to join, as I believe it will be a useful tool for all of us, and specially for our clients.If you have any questions on how GNH Community (that´s the name of the site) works on how to sign up, the person that is taking care of the site is Roger Senserrich at CAHS; his e-mail is rsenserrich@cahs.org and his phone is 860.951.2212 ext 247. He will be more than glad to help; he is actually going to be hosting workshops, even, to help people set up. "Sounds good? Please, spread the word!
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Just a quick heads up on the new income guidelines that DSS has just update. The gross income limit for SNAP has gone from 130% Federal poverty level to 185%, so many more people now qualify. Here you have the new monthly income limits:Persons in family Income limits year/week/month1 $20,036 $385 $16572 $26,955 $518 $22293 $33,874 $651 $28014 $40,793 $784 $33735 $47,712 $918 $39456 $54,631 $1051 $45187 $61,550 $1184 $50908 $68,469 $1317 $5662There are other news, as well:- No more asset tests: no limit in the amount of savings a person can have anymore.- Standard utility deduction is automatically included for everyone ($720).A word document with the updates here: 185 percent SNAP guideline English.docFor an in depth look at the changes, please join us in our next webminar on June 30th. Check the invite, and sign up here.
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I am writing to inform you that the Department of Social Services is proposing to make two changes to Connecticut’s TANF State Plan.The first is to add a new component to our TANF Outreach program known as the “Help for People in Need” program. A change recommended by the Governor in her proposed budget, this is a new informational brochure that will be sent to all existing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - formerly Food Stamps) recipients and new SNAP participants. By providing this TANF service to all SNAP recipients they will qualify as “categorically eligible” for the SNAP program. This will allow us to increase the gross income limit in the SNAP program from 130% to 185% of the federal poverty level effective July 1, 2009. In addition it will eliminate the asset test in the SNAP program. This will permit many working families and individuals to continue receiving benefits and will also allow many low-income elderly individuals with assets above the regular $3,000 SNAP asset limit, to qualify for SNAP program benefits.The second change is a revision to the description of those non-citizens whose medical assistance is funded by TANF. The recently enacted federal Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) included a provision, effective April 1, 2009, to allow certain legal non-citizens to qualify for Medicaid (HUSKY A) coverage without having to wait until they have been US residents for five years. This includes children under the age of 21, pregnant women and post-partum women. Since these individuals, formerly covered with TANF MOE funds, will now be covered by Medicaid we have revised our description of the TANF program for non-citizen families to omit reference to these individuals. The TANF program will now only cover the parents and other caretaker relatives of HUSKY children.Cut and paste the link below into your browser to review the text of the state plan change.http://www.ct.gov/dss/cwp/view.asp?Q=440988&A=2345
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I was making a map of all New Haven Food pantries listed at the 211 database for doing outreach using Google Maps (this way I don´t get lost as often). It might be useful for other people, as well, so here I share it.
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Before anything, a couple of notes on the GNH Community site as it stands now:1. It is more or less a trial site. There is filler content and fictional non-profits populating it to show how it would look like. We will take them down when needed, and there are filters to avoid other jokers.2. As it is not "official" yet, feel free to play with all the tools to get a feeling on how it works. It is safe.3. Nothing is set in stone. Please sent suggestions and write comments all over the place talking on how to improve the site.
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When talking about smart growth, it is important to keep in mind that we are only focusing on saving energy and being green, but also on how to generate economic growth. Connecticut has not been all that successful at doing either in the last few years (specially seeing how the financial sectors was not actually that profitable after all), so we should remember than several of the proposed policies are pro-growth, not just protecting some environmental cause.Of all the economic indicators of the past few years, one of the most worrisome is Connecticut´s failure to retain its creative class in the state. The creative class is a concept created by Richard Florida to explain why some metropolitan areas and regions grow and some stagnate. According to Florida, the cities that manage to attract a certain profile of people succeed: young, highly educated professionals with skills that focus on working on abstract ideas and creating new concepts.Connecticut as a state is a huge factory of creative-class types; the centers of higher education produce a lot of highly skilled, really smart, really active professionals. Our big problem is they run away from the state as soon as they can, usually to places like Austin, San Francisco, New York or Chicago. The workforce that could be driving Connecticut to become a source of innovation leaves the suburban developments and big corporations behind, and move to work somewhere else.Focus for a moment on where "creative class types" move to. Overwhelmingly they move to vibrant, dense, active cities; usually place with thriving cultural life, a wide range of lifestyle, housing choices and -in most cases- transit friendly. Cities that are tolerant, open, full of hipsters, start ups. That is, not the kind of choices available in most of Connecticut.Do we need a state that caters to hipsters? Well, not exactly. What we need, however, is allow cities to offer this kind of choices. These creative environments only thrive in places with a wide variety of housing types, dense, mixed use development and a strong, solid backbone of higher education institutions, innovative businesses and low barriers of entry to invest and create. Some cities in Connecticut are trying, and so far succeeding somewhat, in building this (New Haven being the best example), but they operate under the fiscal straitjacket of the state´s property tax system.Just remember that sometimes hipsters demand and follow somewhat pointless projects, that create much bigger returns (by attracting more creative types) that one may expect. Streetcars (and, up to a point, bike lanes) are the poster child of this; beloved toys that seem to attract quality development. Maybe New Haven and Stamford are being quite realistic, after all.
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