Juvenile Welfare Board Working with Family Services Initiative Partners to Move Homeless Families Out of Hotels

The Family Services Initiative is a collaboration among four partner agencies in Pinellas County working to provide families the right service, at the right time, for the right need. Although the initiative is several years old, for the past nine months, the initiative has taken up the specific goal of keeping homeless families out of hotels and ensuring them places in shelters specifically set up for them. The Juvenile Welfare Board has been participating in weekly meetings as a data partner, tracking how the initiative is doing at reaching their goals. Last May, they presented their baseline data to the community. Since then, the partners have been more proactive at reserving spaces for families in shelters with case management in place, and the Juvenile Welfare Board has been able to show that progress with their data. By tracking the number of spaces available in shelters, the number of families housed in shelters versus hotels, and which partner placed them, they have been able to show that the number of families with children placed in hotels has gone down since the initiative began its work just nine months ago.