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UDMO Program Director’s Reports - September 2017

Inside

Human Resources

Operations

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IT 8

LIHEAP 9-11

Weatherization 12

Housing 13

FaDSS 14

SAIL 15

Hand in Hand 16

KIDS 17

WIC 18

Power Up YOUth 19

Early Childhood 20

Outreach 21-25

Executive Director - Jamey M. Whitney

With September comes fall, my favorite time of year! Also, in September, UDMO is a buzz with activity. Head Start is up and running, Outreach Specialists and staff are preparing for a new LIHEAP season, and we are in the final month for many of the other programs in the agency and will be conducting end-of-the-year activities. Below are some of major activities underway.

STAFF We have had several staff changes over the last month. It appears that we are closer to filling all of our positions including a few that have been vacant for awhile. As of this month, we have filled all of the outreach and administrative vacancies. We have also hired and filled a number of Early Childhood programming vacancies.

Unfortunately, staff transitions are a fact and activity that we will always be faced with on an ongoing basis. As I stated, stagnate funding and wages, combined with ever increasing expenses continue to make it difficult to hire and/or retain staff in all of our programs. As staff continue to be limited and jobs continue to require specif-ic skill sets, we will always struggle with filling vacancies. I believe that we need to work on increasing our wage scales if we hope to retain qualified staff; definite-ly an important discussion that the board and staff need to have for future planning.

One position we have been looking forward to filling was in our fiscal offices. Well, we have a new Accounting/Payroll Assistant, Jessie Lytle. Jessie shared that she grew up in Brandon, SD, but just recently moved from Ames to Emmetsburg. She has 3 children, ages 17, 14, and 2. In her free time she enjoys running, spending time with family, and refurbishing furniture. Her work background has been in ad-ministration as she was previously a business office manager for a long term care company for 15 years. If you have the opportunity to see or talk to Jessie, please welcome her to Upper Des Moines. I would also, like to take just a moment to welcome Dawn Dahm back as Outreach Specialist in Clay County. She indicated that she just couldn't live without seeing all of our smiling faces and I know that Clay County residents will be well taken care of now that she is back as well.

Welcome Kallen Anderson. Kallen is our new Registered Dietician who works in our WIC program.

I would like to welcome Starr Muniz Thompson, Talor Stein, Amanda Schwartz, Rachael Haack, Brittany Gourly, Carissa Sundall, Dawn Hoffman, Denny Muller and Maria (Lynn) Estevez. It is awesome to have all of these people on board. I would like to send out a HUGE WELCOME to all of the new staff throughout UD-MO. Please let me know if I or any of your co-workers can assist you as you get acclimated to your new position. Finally, I would like to wish all the individuals who are moving on to different job opportunities the best in their new ventures.

GRANTS We had a few grants that were done over the last month. We also received notices for upcoming applications we will be completing. The first items were regarding the

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Grants (cont). Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding. We received notice along with a contract in the amount of $427,840. We will need the board to approve this contract to accept the funds. The second item for CSBG is the budget amendment that we need to forward to the state. As you may recall from last month’s meeting, we received notice of a 1% cut in funds for the 2017 fiscal year ending September 30, 2017. We need to approve the budget so we can officially submit it to the Department of Human Rights.

The next item was specific to the Weatherization program. UDMO received notice stating that Black Hills En-ergy (BHE-17-16) had provided additional funds, therefore providing an additional $17,000 for Weatheriza-tion.

I believe last month I shared with you that CACFP and Fiscal staff were working on the CACFP Home Provid-er and Head Start Program Grants. In addition, CACFP funding for the Head Start program will remain the same and funding for the Home Providers grant is dependent on the number of providers. Staff anticipates to keep the provider numbers at 50 which brings funding for the program to $379,763. Both grants have been submitted and we hope to receive word soon.

PROGRAMS & REVIEWS Program review and evaluation is a continual process. There is always some type of review , assessment and/or evaluation being conducted. The first item is the CSBG Organizational Standards Agency Self-Assessment. This year we are required to send in a completed self assessment indicating how we are meeting the CSBG Or-ganizational Standards. Every two years we are subject to an on-site review. This year we are in an “off” year and are only required to complete the assessment forms and submit them to the state. You can access them on our website at www.udmo.com. Click the board tab then CSBG and you will find it labeled UD-MO CSBG Organizational Standards Self Assessment FY2017 to review the completed assessment.

In August the Iowa Department of Public Health conducted two on-site WIC visits. They suggested areas for improvement and/or recommendation for improvement. You will find Tami Meendering’s (WIC Program Director) response to the WIC Clinic & Office Visit review. We will provide you with the States response once we receive it.

The final item in your packet for program reviews is the FY2017 UDMO FaDSS Annual Report. This was submitted to the state and outlines the outcomes the program achieved by FaDSS for the year . It also includes a success story as part of the requirement. We were informed that the state has changed the FaDSS Program review requirements. They will now conduct on-site reviews every two years so in FY2018, the pro-gram only needs to submit a desk audit of the program.

September is the final month for the Power Up YOUth DFC grant. As of September 30, 2017, the program will cease operations and closeout activities will begin. Actually closeout activities have already been happen-ing. I would like to send out a huge shout out to Kathy Getting and Kristi Schrad. Both have been wonderful to work with and I do wish the best for both of them . Kathy will continue to over see the STOP grant and will be working only minimally during the week. She anticipates to be retiring soon! Kristi will be looking for part-time employment in the Webster City area. Please, take the time to wish both of them well as we say good-bye to them and the Power Up YOUth program. You will truly be missed and THANK YOU for all of you have done for the youth and citizens of Hamilton County. You have made a huge difference. As we discussed in previous board meetings, Elderbridge is no longer funding the CHORE Grant as it did pre-viously. However, based on conversations that have been had with the counties, it appears that we will be able to continue this program with funds provided by most of the counties. Two counties, Webster and Clay will not be providing the program for the FY2018 program year. Clay County will resume funding the program in 2019. Dickinson County has chosen to fund the program at 50% of the previous level and all the other coun-ties will continue the program as before. This is great news for our seniors and we will be working with out-reach to prepare for this program soon as the weather begins to change.

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OTHER As we had discussed previously, we had Sackett Law Firm, review our Personnel Policies as required in the CSBG Organizational Standards. The have provided us with several items. The first was a Matrix of recommendations for changes. Most recommendations were grammatical or formatting issues. Howev-er, some had legal grounds for change and would need to be discussed by the board. Along with this matrix, we received updated policies with the changes marked in red. The final item we received was a Person-nel Policies Review Letter from Barry validating the policy review. We need this to meet the Organiza-tional Standard requirements.

To complete this process we will need to do a couple of things. First we need to accept and approve the Per-sonnel Policies Review Letter we received from Barry to formally accept the review. The second par t of this process will be to approve the recommended changes. We have provided the matrix with this board pack-et. What we would like you to do is between now and the October 24, 2017 meeting, please review the matrix and compare them to the policies that can be found on the UDMO website. Go to www.udmo.com, go to the Board tab at the top, click on CSBG and you will find the 2017 Personnel Policy recommenda-tions. Once you have had time to review, we will discuss and approve them in the October Board Meet-ing.

As I stated previously, September is the time of the year that brings several of our programs to year end. With that we will be having all program staff submit all bills and expenses as early as possible so that we can do End of the Year Closings of programs. I would ask all board members to please send in your mileage sheets for the period of October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017. Most of you have already done that but just in case please get them in as soon as possible.

We do have a new board member that is with us for the first time and her name is Melody Larson. Melody is Humboldt County’s Emergency Management Coordinator. Melody is very involved with her community and comes highly recommended as a board member. We welcome Melody and are excited to have her on our Multi-County Board. ESTHERVILLE PROJECT Things are beginning to move forward with renovations at the Roosevelt Building. To-date (09/18/2017) all rooms have been cleared out and some have been prepped and skim coated. Most of the work is anticipated to occur over the next few weeks. I have provided several pictures of the areas, but they don't show much oth-er then patched walls and empty restrooms. We will continue to photograph the progress being made. And share them on our Facebook page. Some of the larger renovations that we anticipate to see completed over the next few weeks will include:

The remaining walls will be patched and skim coated. All walls will be painted. Ceilings put up in the restrooms. Fixtures installed in the restrooms. Floors will be stripped, sanded and resealed.

Once the renovations are completed, we will need to do a punch list walk through then have the State Fire Marshalls office walk through to give us the okay to use the space. Once that is done we will schedule movers to work with staff to transfer all equipment and materials to the Roosevelt Center from the current location at the Methodist Church. With all that we project, this project to be completed over the next month! This is an exciting project that is truly in line with our mission “We are dedicated to helping build stronger communi-ties by addressing the effects of poverty on individuals and families.”

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Human Resources– George Wigen

On August 3rd, I attended the H.R. ICAA meeting in Boone. Once again, I value the networking available to me with this group.

Arnold’s Park Outing – Well, the morning did not look promising due to some angry mother nature, however the skies cleared enough for us to have a great day. A little shy of 300 people attended. A huge thank you to the Park for working with us as well as Hy-Vee for providing a wonderful meal! For me, it was a great oppor-tunity to put “the face with the name”. I also would like to thank all those who put this event together, your efforts were greatly appreciated….a job well done!!

I attended the National CAP Conference in Philadelphia at the end of the month. Once again I was amazed at how well they organize their conferences. I attended various sessions and soaked it all in. It was a great expe-rience and am grateful for UDMO for allowing me to attend.

We had an orientation on August 7, for two employees.

Wrap – Jefferson

Substitute Teacher - Jefferson

We had an orientation on August 14 for four employees.

(2) Classroom Aide – Estherville

Toddler Teacher – Estherville

Home Visitor – Palo Alto

We had orientation on August 18 for one employee.

Toddler Teacher – Estherville

We had orientation on August 21 for one employee.

Administrative Secretary Head Start – Central Office

We had orientation on August 23 for one employee.

Temporary IT Assistant – Central Office

We had orientation on August 25 for two employees.

Assistant Teacher – Estherville

P.T. WIC Dietician

We had orientation on August 28 for one employee.

Outreach Specialist – Clay Co.

For the month of August, we had the following terminations:

Home Based Teacher – Storm Lake

(2) Temporary Wrap Caregivers – Storm Lake

Outreach Specialist – Clay Co.

Food Service – Estherville

Classroom Aide – Estherville

Toddler Teacher – Estherville

For the month of August, we had two layoffs:

Food Service – Estherville

Assistant Teacher – Jefferson

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Information Technology—Elisa Umscheid

Current projects:

Head Start— the work on the new Estherville location is progressing and phone and internet services will be established as soon as the contractors have completed the classroom portion of the remodel. New com-puter installs are nearing completion and the reissue of rotated computers has begun. Those computers are in Graettinger and are in the process of being wiped and reloaded for the next group of staff to make use of.

The WIC changeover is in process, we have all the hardware needed and I am reviewing existing proce-dures for compliance and any necessary changes needed.

Fiscal computer installs will be completed by the time of this meeting. The online purchase order project is progressing. Hardware orders have been submitted and quotes for the installation and setup of the equipment are pending approval.

The recycling company that takes old computer hardware has picked up the copy machine from Storm Lake, but we have discovered numerous copiers and fax machines in the warehouse that need to be re-moved. I am in the process of scheduling a time for pickup here in Graettinger.

Staff support calls and e-mail requests arrive daily and are addressed as they are received.

Operations—TJ Thayer

Worked with Jamey, Kayla, and George to finish the Organizational Standards to ensure wording and numbers were all correct and ready to be submitted.

UDMO Webster County Outreach was selected as one of the Fort Dodge Charities for the upcom-ing Amazon series, Fireball Run event.

Were selected as a United Way Spencer recipient for Buena Vista, Clay, and O’Brien counties. Jamey Whitney attended the meeting and delivered packets as part of their campaign.

Attended Annual Conference in Philadelphia.

Completed and submitted final report for the Dickinson County Endowment Emergency Solutions Grant.

Attended ROMA Subgroup meeting

Working on grants that will be submitted the next month.

We sent out a request to all employees and board members, along with approximately 1,200 partners over all 12 counties the Community Assessment Survey. We were required to get 225 surveys submitted by October 13, 2017, I am happy to say as of September 1, 2017, 232 have be submitted for Upper Des Moines Oppor-tunity Inc. Thank you to all Board members, staff, and partners for helping UDMO meet this requirement.

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Page 7 LOW-INCOME HOME ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (LIHEAP) - Jennifer Corley

For the month of August the Energy Department was busy preparing for this upcoming LIHEAP season. Jennifer Corley and Deb Sidles attended the Iowa Directors of Energy Assistance meeting in Des Moines. August 9th the supplemental payment was made to 1,766 households for a total spent of $178,260. These sup-plemental payments went to these targeted households. Households with the lowest income 0%-75% poverty Households heating with Electric = $75 Households heating with Natural Gas = $105 Households heating with Propane = $135 Outreach is very busy helping clients with crisis assistance. Crisis money can be spent all on all the crisis components including furnace work and new with the contract amendment; fans and medically necessary window air conditioners:

fans medically necessary window air conditioner reconnect service continuity deposits for heat and/or electric out of fuel or help pay a propane/fuel oil back bill furnace repair / replacement (homeowners only) and crisis only applications for any of the above (if the client missed applying for LIHEAP but is in a

crisis situation, etc.) As of August 31st, there was approximately $71,000 left in crisis funding to be spent before September 30, 2017. For August, 94 households received crisis assistance in the form of reconnection, service continuity, deposits, out of fuels, air conditioners and fans for a total spent of $23,792.76. Year to date, 437 households have re-ceived crisis assistance for a total spent of $173,375.85. We have 4 furnace replacements pending. Thank you to all the Outreach staff and Deb and Shelly for all their hard work for the lieap program.

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HAND IN HAND– Shakira Meyer

Weatherization - Kyle Dietrich

Cumulative Number of Programs Participating: 5 Cumulative Number of Environments Served: 11 Cumulative Number of Children Served: 145 Cumulative Number of Families Served: 118 (Note: Environment, Children and Families numbers are being tallied by programs with the start of the new year. Total numbers are incomplete and will be updated as programs continue to return the data survey) Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT) and/or Teaching Pyramid Infant Toddler Observation Scale (TPITOS) visits are being completed with a number of child care centers this fall. These observations will es-tablish a baseline for pyramid practice implementation in each early care environment and guide the coaching and training services offered throughout the program year. The Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports Infant Toddler module training will be held one time per week from September 7 through October 4 in Hartley, IA. There are 12 providers from four early care pro-grams enrolled to participate in the training. Registration has just opened for the Positive Behavior Interven-tion and Supports Preschool module training to be held October 21 and 28 in Sanborn, IA. Hand in Hand is scheduled to do an annual presentation to the Early Childhood Iowa – Lakes Region board at their next monthly meeting on October 5, 2017. Success Story: A TPOT observation was completed in mid-August with a child care center. Upon returning at the end of the month to review the data and goal set with the Director and staff, the program had already implemented a number of pyramid practices including a review of their environment and rearranging the classroom to elimi-nate wide open spaces and creating play areas (blocks, art, reading area, sensory area, dramatic play and a calm down space). The wide open spaces and lack of specific play spaces had contributed to many unsafe be-haviors including running in the classroom. The Director shared that the children have responded well to the changes. This program will be supported in ongoing goal setting to aid in implementing pyramid practices to fidelity over time.

Number of Families Served in 2017: 62 Number of Families Served in August 2017: 5 Goal for 2017: NA Weatherization Update: During the month of August, we received $110,000 in HEAP funds. We are continuing to make sure that we are spending all allocated FY2017 money. Also, we are still in the process of contracting with our sister agen-cy, Mid- Sioux Opportunity, and helping them out with their weatherization program. I would like to thank Ryan TenNapel for taking on that responsibility and doing a great job at assisting in this process. This oppor-tunity is also great for both of our agencies and is creating a great partnership. This partnership can continue in the future and may create other opportunities within other programs that we offer here at UDMO. We con-tinue to push forward to make homes more energy efficient and continue to improve the lives of our clients in our 12 counties that we offer this program to. Up-Coming Events: QCI Tier 1 Training September 26th-28th. Des Moines Iowa.

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Housing Report: Kim Motl Housing Coordinator

Homeless Prevention

5 Households- 13 Individuals

Rapid Re-Housing

5 Households- 15 Individuals

Shelter

2 Households- 5 Individuals

Success Story:

This month I’m in Webster County were Rosalie and her two child fled domestic violence. The children wit-nessed a family member being killed in the home. Rosalie had a friend living in the area and told her to come here where no one would be able to locate her. She bought bus tickets for her and the kids and they made their journey here; however, when they arrived, the friend was no longer in town. They wandered the streets for a week before being directed to UDMO’s outreach office in Fort Dodge. With the help of the ESG grant, we were able to place her and the children in a motel for two nights and we are working with a landlord in town to get them into an apartment. We also did referrals to the health center and the kids were able to get the med-icine that they require. The family is now working with the SAIL program.

Women, Infants & Children (WIC) - Julie Erskine

Numbers served: Dur ing the month of August, our par ticipation was 1929 active clients. Current changes in national and/or state trends: (This information is obtained from NWA Weekly Up-date) As members of Congress return to Washington DC next Tuesday, there are two upcoming budget deadlines that NWA will be monitoring.

First, Congress must act to raise the federal debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on our obligations and being unable to pay the government’s bills.

Second, Congress must pass a spending bill to fund the government for FY 2018. This will likely be in the form of a Continuing Resolution (CR) or a combination Continuing Resolution and Om-nibus appropriations bill (CRomnibus), as Congress has not made significant progress towards passing individual appropriations bills (in a “normal” appropriations process there are twelve bills).

The deadline for both of these steps is September 29th. One possibility is that the debt ceiling and spending bills could be combined into a single legislative vehicle as a means of forging consensus. Some Congressional Republicans, specifically members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, have called for cuts in domes-tic discretionary funding as part of any spending bill, though leadership has indicated a focus on moving for-ward with a “clean” bill in a bipartisan way. These disagreements, along with President Trump’s statements that he may refuse to sign a bill that does not include funding for the border wall between the US and Mexico, may make it difficult to meet these two budget deadlines. We are hopeful that the combination of a CR with a debt ceiling bill will increase the likelihood of passing both.

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FaDSS-Alisa Schlief— Serving Webster, Wright, Hamilton, Humboldt, Palo Alto, Emmet, Buena Vista and Pocahontas counties

Numbers Served Number of Families Served for August 2017: 77 families Year to Date Families Served July 1 ,2017 to August 30, 2017: 88 families Family Story Brad, Betty and Sam enrolled in the FaDSS program. They were in need of help with resources, parenting, budgeting and employment. The family had trusted in me to help them when they needed food or just someone to vent to about what was going on in their lives. I was able to get the family connected with the resources that would help them with housing assistance. We were able to get them signed up for LIHEAP, Adopt a Family and Back to School. FaDSS assisted them in completing and maintaining a monthly budget. Brad had ex-pressed to me that even though he is on SSD, he would still like to work part time. We were able to find him part time employment and Betty became employed there as well. Sam is going to school and learning all that he can and enjoying his school and being around his friends.

Families for August 2017: 32 Families serviced for October 1, 2016-August 30, 2017: 82 Families successfully exited from the program for August 2017: 2 Families successfully exited from the program October 1, 2016-June 30, 2017: 54 Family Story I have been working with Eric for about 8 months. When I first met Eric he was very depressed and was struggling with several mental illnesses. Eric needed help filing for Social Security Disability. We met a few times before we started the process and Eric collected information needed for the application and I put it to-gether on the computer. It took more than four meetings to get it all done. Through the months, we got Eric and his family on Medicaid and food stamps. We got Embrace Iowa to pay his rent. He also received LIHEAP for his heating expenses. His four year old daughter will be starting Head Start this Fall. Through the months, we have had to do more paperwork and to supply documents to Social Security. Last week I got a call from Eric and he had been awarded his Social Security disability. He was crying on the phone and of course I was crying too. He thanked me for the dedication, stamina and patience to work with him.

SAIL (Self-Sufficiency Advocates for Individual Life Skills) Alisa Schlief

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Kommunity Involvement Development and Support (K.I.D.S) - Jessie Hansen

In the month of August, we received several new referrals in Dickinson County from Prairie Lakes AEA, Public Health, and the Department of Human Services. This is encouraging since we previously have not had a lot of referrals from this county. We continue to have full caseloads in all of our service areas, and we have been trying to keep waiting lists to a minimum.

The KIDS Program staff have also agreed to be a part of a work group for Early Childhood Iowa professional development competencies. We will have our first webinar on September 12th at 1PM. We also participated in a Books and Crafts event hosted by Early Childhood North Central Iowa in Algona on August 17th. This event took place at the Algona Library Lawn and included police officers from the community. Each child received a book courtesy of ECI. We were able to have a staff member present to represent the KIDS Pro-gram.

I recently attended a regional training for Prevent Child Abuse Iowa. There are a few changes being made to how they are administering grants and changes that may affect how individual and multi-county sites apply for funding. The hope is that by merging individual and multi-county sites, the process for reporting, pay-ments, and collaboration will be best for all parties involved. Updates will be provided as conversations are held between those area representatives and service providers.

My team and I have also looked at how we are collecting data for different funding sources. You may remem-ber that we are using a data system called Daisey, that is a project from the University of Kansas. Early Child-hood Iowa has adopted this system for all of its home visiting programs with support from the Iowa Depart-ment of Public Health. Prevent Child Abuse Iowa, which is another funding source for KIDS, is also trying to utilize the same format instead of a separate website for their data. There have been some recent snags for Prevent Child Abuse Iowa to be able to use this system and it may be some time before it is required for all parent education/home visiting programs. This creates difficulty for us as a Program because reports provided in the Daisey system need to reflect how many visits each funding source received. Unfortunately, we cannot add a separate program in Daisey just for Prevent Child Abuse Iowa as of yet because certain steps need to be taken. So as of right now our choices for program participants are; KIDS Program and KIDS Outreach. Out-reach meaning that the participant doesn’t participate on a long term basis. We will continue to look at this throughout the year and hopefully we will have some resolution sooner rather than later.

Success Story: In May, the Department of Human Services (DHS) referred a family of four to Early Access and KIDS Program. DHS wanted Early Access to complete developmental screening on the children (3 years old and 3 month olds). During the initial visit, KIDS Family Support Worker (FSW) assisted with screenings, which showed both girls were on target developmentally, thus did not qualify for Early Access services. The family shared they were originally from New York, lived a short time in Des Moines and had moved into the area in January. They were unfamiliar with resources available and the community in general. They had met few people and have limited social interactions. The mother expressed an interest in the KIDS Program as she wanted to become more familiar with resources for her and her children. The family had one vehicle, which the father used to get to and from work (afternoon shift), which left the mother without trans-portation a majority of the day. The mother wanted to enroll her 3-year-old in the Head Start Program and upon suggestion from FSW she expressed an interest in becoming familiar with the local library. By the fourth visit, KIDS FSW had brought and helped the mother complete a Head Start application, communicated with Head Start to get the child on their list and walked with the mother and children to the library. The FSW role modeled ways to help children learn what behavior is and is not acceptable in a library setting. Also by the fourth visit, the family’s 5-year-old son, who had been with a relative in Des Moines until the end of the school had joined the family. He expressed an interest in several books, which the mother checked out. On the fifth visit, I asked the boy if they were reading the books and he commented “every day”.

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Power Up YOUth – Kathy Getting

Numbers Served Number of Families Served: 21

Number of Individuals Served: 30

Year to Date Families Served: 71

Year to Date Individuals Served: 212

Current Events

At UDMO’s Back to School Bash, 30 adults walked through the Hidden in Plain Sight mock bedroom that contained drug paraphernalia and other indicators of possible drug use to increase awareness among parents of the use of marijuana by youth. Their comments about how drug use has impacted their lives affirmed that our coalition’s mission is still fulfilling a need within the community.

A number of organizations have committed to taking on some of the tasks previously funded through DFC funds. Community and Family Resources will continue to carry out the coalition’s efforts to reduce and pre-vent marijuana use among youth. Our marketing contractor has committed to updating the Power Up YOUth webpage beyond DFC and will set up Mail Chimp templates for monthly sector Celebrating our Successes evaluation reports and other anticipated bulk mailings. Our outside evaluator has committed to the continued use of their evaluation software and technical support until the DFC close out report is approved.

We continue to build the capacity of our team to be effective community planners. Many members took part in two trainings this month; Mental Health First Aid and Racism: The Power of Illusion. Additionally, four of our desired five community members have been recruited to take part in the Harwood Institute’s Virtual Public Innovators Lab, an eight-week training session beginning September 21st that teaches participants how to en-gage the community in problem solving.

Although we had requested a three-month extension for the DFC grant, it was denied. Invitations have been sent out for our celebration of the end of our DFC grant on September 14th at 6 PM at the Trinity Lutheran Church. Any UDMO board member or staff is welcome to attend.

Success Story: We received word that the DFC semi-annual progress report was accepted as submitted.

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0-5 Early Childhood Program - Connie Siebenbruner Child and Adult Food Program – The Head Start program provides meal reimbursement for Head Start and Toddler classrooms. During the month of August, the program provided meals for 331 children, serving 1820 breakfasts, 1503 lunches and 388 snacks. CACFP operating disbursements were $13,503.63 and claim reim-bursements were $9,001.13 with the remaining $4,502.52 charged to Head Start. The program is currently writing the new CACFP grant which is submitted annually. The In Home Daycare program provided support for 50 childcare providers serving 615 children in the month of August. Enrollment – The program began the new school year fully enrolled. All classrooms maintained attendance rates above 85% and the monthly attendance rate for Head Start was 98.30% for the month of August. Early Head Start had a monthly attendance of 93.66% with all classrooms above 85% for the month. The Home visiting attendance rate for the month of August was 86.25% Applications are currently be taken for the pro-gram’s WRAP childcare program through the month of September. WRAP serves 139 children before and after school and on no school days. Program Information Report (PIR) – The program submits the PIR to the Office of Head Start annually. The information provides nationwide comprehensive data on the services, staff, children, and families served by Head Start and Early Head Start. The PIR is an important source of descriptive and service data which is used by the Office of Head Start, their partners, Congress and is made available to the general public. The 2016-2017 PIR Performance Indicator Reports for Head Start and Early Head Start is included in the Board packet.

The Study of the American Bald Eagle in Head

Start It all started in the summer. A child in the Spencer Head Program was fishing with his family when an eagle decided to join them. He landed close by and everyone got a close up look and when school started the story came along. The classroom children were fascinated by the details of the story and the observant classroom teacher decided to help her children learn about eagles through a process known as the Project Approach.

Children shared what they knew about Eagles, what they wondered about eagles and the research process started. Children, with the assistance of their teachers, searched the internet and books, looked at lots of pictures and invited the Clay County Naturalist to learn from an expert. The Naturalist visited the classroom the week before the Clay County Fair and shared some exciting news. An eagle was coming to the Clay County Fair and the classroom immediately began to plan a fieldtrip to the fair so everyone could get a chance to see a real eagle close up. The children brought along their clip boards, drawing paper and pencils and carefully took the time to draw a picture of the eagle who appeared to be posing just for them. With their pictures in hand, the children headed back to their classroom to continue their study of eagles which is likely to con-tinue for the next several weeks.

 Clay County Fair Visitor  

Documen ng (drawing) the Eagle.

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Buena Vista Happenings:

Monsanto came in with volunteer workers and helped clean out the back room and organize the basement.

Valero dropped off 170 backpacks filled with school supplies.

We were able to take 75 children to Walmart for back to school clothes.

We were able to take 40 children to Hibbett for shoes and school necessities.

BV handed out over 200 backpacks during our backpack distribution.

We received a delivery from the Food Bank.

“Stuff the Truck”- both car dealerships in town ran a promotion to stuff a truck full of school supplies. Clay Happenings:

Dawn Dahm has returned as the Outreach Specialist for Clay County.

AE’s are coming in for appointments.

The warehouse is finally put together and running well.

Clay is preparing for the Christmas Program.

Dickinson Happenings:

Deb will be meeting with Travis from Sunshine Food in Milford. He has great plans with donating food to Dickinson UDMO Outreach. I’m really excited with the plans he is working out for us. Truly blessed in Dickinson County.

Thanks going out to United Methodist Church volunteers in Spirit Lake for picking up food from Walmart and delivering it to our office.

Making appointment with clients for low income home energy assistance program (Liheap).

We are on the road for another year assisting clients with needs as they come up, connecting them with other programs and ways to help them become self-sufficient.

Dickinson County served 92 children in the Back to School Program with school supplies, backpacks, clothing, and food.

Adopt a Family applications have been handed out for our 2017 Christmas Program. So far 18 applications have been handed in.

Emmet Happenings:

We are excited to announce that we will have a new Outreach Specialist joining Emmet County.

Food pantry hours and operations will be changing September 11th, 2017! Clients will be able to come in on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:00-4:00 to get a full food pantry and non-food pantries every three months and on Friday from 10:00 to 12:00 and 1:30 to 4:00 we will have surplus available to clients every other week. We are very excited about this change and believe this will help clients receive a variety of options throughout the month!

Emmet County is now accepting donations of kids coats, hats, gloves, and boots! Hamilton Happenings:

The Back to School Program was a big success this year.

Custom Meats made a large donation of pork ends and pieces.

Members of the community purchased prized hogs at the Hamilton County Fair and donated over 600 lbs. of ground pork.

We had a donation of 19 new coats for our Coats for Kids Program.

Neighborhood Realty held a school supply drive.

Outreach Report—Jamie Ragland

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Hy-Vee & KQWC held a school supply and food drive for UDMO. Kim and Jamie talked on the radio about KQWC’s Cram the Van with school supplies to help get information out about Back to School and our food pantry.

On 8/12/17 we had an all staff meeting in Pocahontas.

We received a lot of produce donated this month. We continue to receive bread and pastry items from Hy-Vee every Tuesday and Thursday.

Teen Lounge, which is held at Kendall Young Library, made a monetary donation to the food pantry.

AE appointments continue.

Advisory Meeting was held in Hamilton County.

Jamie attended a Mental Health Meeting at Social Services and is now certified in Mental Health First Aid.

We are currently taking applications for Coats for Kids. Humboldt Happenings:

We had a very successful Back to School Bash at Rustix in Humboldt on August 1st. We ended up filling 111 backpacks for the kids this year. We appreciate Missy at Rustix for providing us the lovely venue to hold our bash and for providing the food for us.

Coats for Kids is going good with 96 kids signed up already. We are taking applications until September 21st. We appreciate two local banks providing space to display our poster boards with kids to adopt.

We have been busy with AE appointments.

O’Brien Happenings:

O’Brien County office has a new look. It also has a continuous volunteer, her name is Kim. She was actu-ally my first success story.

O’Brien has been busy filling food boxes. We’ve also received numerous donations of fresh fruits and veggies.

Osceola Happenings:

Osceola had their Food Bank of Iowa inspection this month and everything went well.

AE’s are getting in and I’m getting ready to enter them.

The office has received produce from the ISU Extension’s Community Garden in Rock Rapids and em-ployees of the Farm Service Agency next door have donated bags of potatoes to give away.

We still receive food from the mobile pantry in Sibley each month.

Palo Alto Happenings:

We are still doing crisis applications to help people with utility bills.

We are still receiving our AE Liheap forms back from eligible people. We are hoping to start processing them sometime in September.

We received a lot of monetary donations and donations of school supplies. Each family received a book bag filled with supplies and a coupon to purchase a pair of shoes at Shopko for each child.

We handed out our Christmas forms to families when they picked up their school supplies.

Our pantry shelves were getting extremely low on food items and we were totally out of some items. I sent a letter to all county churches and the local paper also ran a story about needed items for the food pantry. We have been getting in some really nice donations to get the shelves stocked back up.

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Pocahontas Happenings:

Clients picked up their backpacks, school supplies, and socks.

Continuing with AE appointments and paperwork.

Receiving lots of garden products.

90 children received school supplies and socks.

Upcoming event September 24th, Walk for Hunger, sponsored by local churches. The walk will end at UDMO and will serve cookies and water. All proceeds collected from all area churches will be given to UDMO to use to purchase food for our pantry.

Webster Happenings:

Webster County Back to School Bash was held. This requires several days of shopping, set up, and pack-ing. 4-H volunteers, Kiwanis Club, and many community volunteers really came through to make this event a success.

Outreach staff meeting was held in Pocahontas at the courthouse. Food Bank of Iowa spoke at the meet-ing.

Outreach manual committee meeting was held in Emmetsburg.

Webster County staff has been filling in for other offices when able to and working to train new outreach specialists.

Walmart donated 4 big boxes of diapers and 3 big boxes of little boy’s clothes to the baby’s room.

Fort Dodge Apple Orchard donated 3 boxes of baby’s room toys and a box of scarves.

A donations of cakes, frosting, toys, and candles was made by a gentleman who wished to remain anony-mous. It was received in memory of a recently deceased community member.

Menards donated a very large box of school supplies to our Back to School Program.

Presbyterian Church donated a dozen baby blankets.

Continue with AE appointments. Wright Happenings:

Farmer’s Market vouchers continue.

Back to School Bash was heled on August 7th with a great turnout, helping over 300 children with back-packs and school supplies.

Started taking applications for Coats for Kids.

Sent letters to the community churches and dropped off boxes places at banks in regards to our Coats for Kids Program.

Donation of winter coats from Sacred Heart Parish.

160 lbs. of food was donated from the Belmond mobile.

Crisis application for reconnects, disconnects, and continued service have been completed.

AE applications are out and appointments are being set up so they can return their paperwork.

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Numbers Served Number of Families Served: Buena Vista: 298, Clay: 185, Dickinson 174, Emmet 161, Hamilton 183,

Humboldt 105, O’Brien 62, Osceola 24, Palo Alto 106, Pocahontas 100, Webster 400, Wright 153, TOTAL: 1,951

Number of Individuals Served: Buena Vista: 830, Clay: 372, Dickinson 365, Emmet 529, Hamilton 500,

Humboldt 278, O’Brien 146, Osceola 45, Palo Alto 216, Pocahontas 287, Webster 1,500, Wright 472, TOTAL: 5,540

Year to Date Families Served: Buena Vista: 892, Clay: 760, Dickinson 564, Emmet 615, Hamilton 532,

Humboldt 359, O’Brien 479, Osceola 217, Palo Alto 399, Pocahontas 363, Webster 2,083, Wright 586, TOTAL: 7,849

Year to Date Individuals Served: Buena Vista: 2,400, Clay: 1,661, Dickinson 1,116, Emmet 1,545, Hamil-

ton 1,281, Humboldt 855, O’Brien 1,125, Osceola 473, Palo Alto 859, Pocahontas 869, Webster 4,904, Wright 1,487, TOTAL: 18,575

Monetary Donations Buena Vista: $2,614.00, Clay: $3,348.00, Dickinson: $5,978.00, Emmet: $1,052.13, Hamilton: $2,103.00, Humboldt: $150.00, O’Brien: $0.00, Osceola: $206.25, Palo Alto: $1,381.40, Pocahontas: $1140.00, Webster: $500.00, Wright: $50.00, TOTAL: $18,522.78 Success Stories:

I had a client come in with her children and her friend. She stated that she needed a food pantry and information for Fort Dodge Housing. The client was in about five months ago because she was new to town and just got married to a client who lived here. She stated that she wanted information for Fort Dodge Hous-ing. I questioned her a little bit about if she had found a place to live because I knew that her husband owned his home. She said that she is in a domestic violence situation. She has a protective order against her husband right now. Her kids are living with her friend and she is trying to find a place to stay in the meantime. I gave the client a food pantry. I also gave her information for Fort Dodge Housing and low income apartments available in Webster City. I talked to her about crisis intervention and D/SAOC. She signed her kids up for the Coats for Kids Program. I also gave her information about the mobile pantries in town. She was very thankful for the assistance. – Jamie Ragland, Hamilton County Outreach I received a phone call from a desperate mom with 3 children. She had been in a domestic and abusive situation, which she had to flee. This has left her and her children homeless. I had her come in the office to try and figure out a way to help her. After going over her situation and income, the end result was that she was over our income guideline. I was able to assist with Project Needy, which is money donated by our Ministerial Association for families in a crisis and over our guidelines. At this time her hours have been cut back at work. So far UDMO has assisted her with a two night stay at a nearby motel, signed her up for Back to School, and looked up rentals which we are working with CHI, Community Housing Initiatives; hoping to hear back ASAP for housing. I also counseled with her in my office. As a result, she seems calmer and even gave me a smile. – Deb Weir – Dickinson County Outreach