3. Institutional
Capacity
This section presents the findings on the infrastructure
capabilities of the voluntary sector. This includes an assessment of outreach, referral,
coordination and information sharing.
Service Delivery:
Among some clients, misconceptions seem to exist regarding the specific services provided
by different agencies. This situation could be caused by the fact that a particular agency
might be the "only game in town." Nevertheless, the situation is solved because
the capacity exists to refer or direct clients to the appropriate agency.
To eliminate some of the barriers that hinder access to
services, the delivery has to be attuned to meet the needs of the ethnic, cultural and
linguistic diversity of the clients. Even among immigrants who arrive speaking English,
the lack of familiarity with language nuances, cultural values and behavior can create an
access barrier.
For clients who do not speak English, interpreters are
needed. A language bank was suggested by agency representatives as a possible answer to
the language barrier issue. This bank could be a service available to all the agencies and
would offer interpreters for languages such as Tagalog, Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin,
Russian, etc.
For accessing and improving the service delivery to
Hispanics and Filipinos, participants had these suggestions: Community leaders can provide
a link between the community and the services, while increasing the level of trust towards
the service providers and the agencies they represent. Ethnic grocery stores are possible
places for disseminating information. Local churches also provide another point of
contact. Filipino and Spanish TV and radio also seem to be effective means of reaching
these populations.
Overall, information for the Filipino community should be
in both English and Tagalog, and for the Latino community in English and Spanish. All
outreach efforts need to be culturally attuned. In addition, regarding the Filipino
community, they resent being "lumped" together with either Asians, Hispanics
(because of the Spanish surnames) or Pacific Islanders, because it has created
misinformation about their community. The term Filipinos should be used always when
referring to this community.
Agency Staffing:
Agency representatives generally agreed that although the non-white, ethnic population was
increasing in the County, agencies staffing has not mirrored this increase. Yet staff
diversity was deemed critical to a program's success because agencies must access needy
groups through "people like them."
Diversity awareness and training among agency staff was
also deemed a need. To prevent client crises, staff needs to recognize the difficulties
associated with the process of acculturation and integration into the dominant culture of
this country.
Volunteers:
The volunteer pool is declining, the era of long term volunteerism is over. Volunteer work
is considered a short term commitment; the turn over rate is high. The reason for the
current situation is that more women, the "backbone" of nonprofit associations,
are now part of the salaried workforce.
This volunteer shortage is a problem for agencies that are
trying to solve the staff shortage problem; they have increased their reliance on
volunteers who work under staff supervision. But there are issues that are of concern to
the service providers: one such issue is confidentiality. They have to rely on volunteers
to maintain the confidentiality required when working with many of their cases. Another
issue is the training and supervision volunteers require, which is time consuming, an
investment, and is usually done by the professional staff. Finally, it is necessary to
match the skills and experience of the volunteers with the services they provide.
Nonetheless, good programs are said to be making effective use of volunteers.
The shortage, or availability, of volunteers can be
described geographically. It is harder to get volunteers in the North County than in the
Mid and South County.
Filipinos and Hispanics are two populations concentrated in
the North County, where it is harder to get volunteers. For Filipinos, the volunteerism as
it is known here represents a culture shock. In the Philippines one helps relatives,
friends, and neighbors; assistance is based on existing relationships among the parties
involved. Among Hispanics, low incomes and the need to work, sometimes at more than one
job, seems to be the primary factor that hampers volunteer work. (Hispanic immigrants tend
to be less schooled than Filipino immigrants.) In general, existing relationships and
church affiliation may provide the conditions for both Filipinos and Hispanics to do any
type of volunteer work.
Program Successes and Failures:
A program offering a comprehensive array of services all under one roof, "One-stop
shopping," is considered very successful. It is not common to find such a
comprehensive service.
Case management service programs are also considered
successful because they focus more on long-term rather than short term solutions. These
case management services also help clients go through the social services system as
needed. This type of service tends to be expensive and rare.
Another successful service is The United Way HELPLINE for
referrals. It seems to be effective.
Agency size is not deemed a success determining factor;
small programs can be very successful and have an impact as great as bigger programs.
Factors that promote success include: Program directors who have a vision and the ability
to secure funds for implementing the vision. They also tend to have the ability to attract
and retain qualified people to keep the program going.
In contrast, lack of funds, inexperienced leadership and
failure to network with other agencies are some of the factors that can contribute to the
failure of a program. Also, they do not have enough knowledge about access to services.
Another problem is that some agencies are driven by the availability of funds to diversify
their services whether or not they have the needed expertise to provide the service.
Cooperation among agencies is perceived as a success by
some; others feels there is not enough cooperation: A great deal of "synergy, "
and "networking" exist among agencies, which has been very helpful, especially
with referrals. Yet concerns were expressed about too much competition among agencies,
especially regarding funds and duplication of services, which in turn adversely affects
cooperation among them.
To improve service and increase the success rate of
programs, it was recommended that The United Way help by developing a centralized system
for county-wide information sharing.
The information could include agencies, availability of
services, inter-county as well as intra-county. It would be a very cost effective way of
sharing information.
Agency Funding:
Most, if not all agency representatives, were very vocal about the severity of budget
cuts, including county funding cuts. These budget cuts are seen as putting their agencies,
as well as themselves, at great financial risk. It was described as a personal risk
because many staff members are being laid off or cannot afford to work for relatively low
pay.
With staff cuts, it takes longer to service clients.
Consequently, a future problem facing the agencies is how to maintain quality of service
with less money.
Agencies that are failing were described as eking out a
hand-to-mouth existence, struggling to stay alive. They tend to spend all of their time
and energy raising funds, coming up with new, imaginative fund raising drives, and keeping
staff. For these agencies "financial fragility" is a real problem. With great
budget cuts, "keeping the doors open" is the challenge.
Services providers felt that agencies considered
"solid," because of the quality of their services, must be preserved; "make
sure they don't go under." Stabilize and maximize what currently exists and later add
new programs. Funding agencies need to focus on funding fewer programs. They need to be
consistent and committed to funding these programs rather than funding many programs
without any commitment to seeing them through. This problem seems to be compounded by the
tendency to fund new, innovative programs, while some good programs with a proven track
record are not funded. But funding new programs is not necessarily cost effective, because
in the early stages a great deal of time is spent developing the program as opposed to
delivering a service.
Pilot Projects, Seed Money system works on the assumption
that if enough initial funding is provided for new projects, they will then somehow find
funds to keep the project going after the initial funding. But in practice, this does not
seem to be the case, and many new projects fold. It is better to spend the energy and
money to maintain the programs that are working. Consequently, The United Way should
consider returning to the system of basic allocation/general fund because the current
grant system has agencies jumping through "funding hoops," to make their project
fit into a narrow grant definition.
Another problem is the culture of competition that exists
among social service agencies. Agencies are all fighting to keep their funding piece of
pie. Donor Designation/Donor Option system, for example, fosters competition to ensure
funding and is contrary to the cooperation needed among agencies. In addition, small,
specialized agencies may be hurt by the Donor Designation/Donor Option program because the
system fosters competition and agencies that are more comprehensive in their services tend
to do better. The United Way could help improve this situation by returning to the focus
it had from the 1970s until the early 1980s.
The Donor Designation system was also described as a
response to a growing public mistrust of big organizations being capable of allocating
funds fairly. Yet this system does not have the flexibility to respond quickly to new
crises, because a fund designation to cover a crises does not exist.
Overall, it was felt that The United Way should become an
"ambassador" promoting globalism and a sense of community. It can be a
philosophical shift: project an image of cohesion and de-emphasize "politicking for
money." It would reemphasize the idea of charitable giving for the general good of
the community, which would in turn foster a sense of community. This approach could also
help The United Way regain the community trust it has lost. |