Beth Rupert-Warren struggles to tell the story without tearing up. A business in Jefferson County reached out to the social worker about having a glut of suitcases it wanted to give away. She found a home for them at the county children's home.
"And there was a little boy there and he's like, 'lady, do you have a green suitcase?' We're pulling them out of my car," Rupert-Warren recalls. "And I say, 'yeah, buddy, here's a green suitcase.' And he said, 'oh my goodness, when my daddy gets out of jail and I get to go home someday, I don't have a garbage bag, I have a suitcase.'"
Rupert-Warren is the community service coordinator for the Jefferson County Resource Network, an initiative in the rural Eastern Ohio county that strives to connect people to the aid they need. While the network, now in its third year, only serves Jefferson County, the lessons Rupert-Warren and locals have learned through the initiative are universal.
Rupert-Warren has worked in social services in the county and surrounding area for 40 years. During that time, she noticed a gap: nonprofits and government aid was available for things like food, housing and disability services, but not everyone who needed that help was taking advantage of it. So she created the Resource Network under the auspices of the Jefferson County Educational Service Center, with help and funding from a mix of partners: the Jefferson County Board of Developmental Disabilities, the Jefferson County Commissioners' Office, the Jefferson County General Health Department and the Jefferson County Prevention and Recovery Board.
The network has a website and phone app with 70-plus different categories of services, listing local agencies, nonprofits and businesses that provide those services. The service is similar to the 2-1-1 system that most counties in the U.S. have, where residents can either call or go online to find resources. But Rupert-Warren says it's much more than that. She sees it as "building a stronger community."
"We have community partner meetings," Rupert-Warren said. "We meet quarterly and sometimes we have 30 to 60 agencies all together in one room and everybody's fostering positive working relationships. We do a community connection, which is an email contact list, where we have over 400 emails on that community connection list. And we're just constantly sharing information with all the community partners as to trainings, events, services, different things that are going on in the community."
Getting so many local partners in the same room together fosters creative problem-solving, Rupert-Warren explained. One of the first things that resulted from that collaboration is a support group for people raising grandchildren or other family members' children that meets regularly. Food and childcare is provided along with speakers who talk about support services in the county. Equally important are the connections those families have now made with each other.
"You'll see one family, they're like, 'hey, I'll watch your kids on Tuesdays while you go grocery shopping, if you watch mine Saturday,'" Rupert-Warren said. "So it's like their families are getting bigger, and it's almost this environment of family by choice and support."
More complex problems are also being addressed. Residents in one rural section of the county told Rupert-Warren there were no pharmacies nearby, and they struggled to get their medicine. The Resource Network called local pharmacies together, and they agreed to extend their delivery area. Now medicine is being delivered to those residents.
"Unless you have somebody that's out there doing this, you don't know the needs," Rupert-Warren explained, noting she only heard about the issue after stopping by local churches and other gathering places.
The Jefferson County Resource Network is also pulling together local healthcare providers to figure out a solution to another problem residents brought up: a lack of pediatric home health care. Rupert-Warren said the lack of those services, meant to help newborns and young children with health issues stay at home instead of at hospitals, means on some occasions, children are staying for months at hospitals in cities like Akron when they could be cared for at home.
"We actually have an agency now that is advertising for a pediatric nurse, and we're hopefully here soon gonna be able to announce that we can provide that service. It's not something that's needed all the time, but when it's needed, it's needed," she said.
The network also now lists local businesses' services and information about historic landmarks in the county for visitors.
Rupert-Warren said communities have the power to fix problems themselves, if they work together.
"The answers are all here. It's just getting everybody to work together. A lot of them are easy fixes."
