News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
UCHRA shifting its focus to teaching Upper Cumberland residents how to improve their situations on their own.
Deputy Director LaNelle Godsey said the agency is in the second year of a three-year plan designed to address the biggest needs in the Upper Cumberland. Godsey said UCHRA wants to avoid duplicating other social programs that already exist, so they are working on ways to educate people about services that already exist.
“And so this year with the way the needs come out, it was more that we needed to help people access and find,” Godsey said. “So that’s why we’re focusing on a lot of internal training to make our staff more navigating so that they’re helping folks find the resources that they need.”
Godsey said the five biggest needs identified by residents in the plan, are high paying jobs, affordable housing, resources for the homeless, mental health services, and accessible and affordable childcare. She said they are training their staff to help people set and reach their goals.
Godsey said they will also educate clients on how to be an effective supervisor and the importance of community action.
“You see on those that they’re just wanting access to and wanting better,” Godsey said. “For the first time ever, food insecurity didn’t pop into the top five needs of the Upper Cumberland.”
Godsey said food insecurity decreased across the region because many more non-profits began providing food to their communities during the pandemic.
“It could potentially return in the future,” Godsey said. “Of course, we’ll be doing some update surveys just to put a pulse and put our finger to see how things are going, but we still are seeing lots of organizations that are providing food out in the communities right now.”
Godsey said they need more kinds of support beyond their emergency services because about sixty-seven percent of their clients were the same people from 2021 to 2023.
“We know that there’s folks that are on, you know, social security, they’re on those fixed incomes, and we want to see them every year,” Godsey said. “We want to help them with their electric bill and things. But what this is kind of showing us with our younger families and some folks, we are wanting to, you know, be like Empower (Upper Cumberland). We want to move these folks up the economic ladder.”
