A SAFE HAVEN FOUNDATION

A Safe Haven Foundation's overarching goal is to help people aspire, transform, and sustain their lives from homelessness to self-sufficiency with pride and purpose. ASHF provides the tools for each individual to overcome the root causes of homelessness through a holistic, scalable model. ASHF's visible social and economic impact unites families, stabilizes neighborhoods, and creates vibrant, viable communities.

ASHF was founded in 1994 and has been licensed by the State of Illinois to provide substance abuse treatment services since 2001. In our 20 year history, ASHF has been committed to helping people transform their lives from one of alcoholism, addiction and crime to self-sufficiency in sobriety with gainful, living wage employment and affordable housing. In a safe and supportive treatment environment, clients are able to identify and address the root causes of criminal thinking and behavior.

ASHF realized in order for people to sustain their sobriety, they needed stable housing, living-wage employment, healthcare, and access to supportive services. ASHF strategically expanded it program offerings to include emergency, interim/ transitional, permanent supportive and affordable housing, intensive case management, recovery support services, adult basic education, job training, placement and retention. ASHF seeks to stabilize individuals, unite families, strengthen neighborhoods, and create vibrant, viable communities.

Today, ASHF is a nonprofit social service agency and related social businesses enterprise dedicated to creating jobs, and serving as employers to people with barriers to employment; and collaborate with a network of public and private partners to achieve a common mission—the pursuit of solving the issue of homelessness for people and families in need - one person at a time.

A multidisciplinary team approach is used to address various needs of housing, recovery, and mental health services. We employ nearly 200 qualified professional staff, who provides direct-service to over 5,000 individuals annually or over 1,000 on a daily basis. Our employees are professionally trained, credentialed, certified and many have extensive experience in working with vulnerable, high-risk populations.

The main campus has available interim housing for up to 400 individuals, multiple classroom and training facilities, a computer lab, a cafeteria, treatment rooms, a job training center, and access to support services. We also manage special contracts through our Social Business Enterprises (earned-income, for-profit companies) with corporations and government agencies throughout Chicago and surrounding communities. Operating from the principle that housing is the foundation of success, we serve individuals and families from all 77 Chicago community areas, with a large concentration residing in the south and west sides' communities hardest hit by poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, and violence—particularly, North Lawndale, Austin, West Garfield Park, Englewood, South Shore, and Chatham.

Over the last few years, at A Safe Haven, we have done everything we can to meet the growing demand for services, including acquiring and merging with other homeless shelters and services, whenever we're called upon by either social service agency leadership, their boards, their banks, government agencies, or other stakeholders, to help them preserve the important services of organizations that were on the verge of liquidation. The demise of many of these organizations could've potentially left the people that depended on them on the streets and their employees with no other options! We believe that our decisions at crucial times to take the leap of faith and to join forces to stabilize other service providers, assume the responsibility of managing them, and support their funders, and embrace their clients and staff has resulted in a winning scenario, for all Chicagoans.

Today, these decisions have allowed us to now offer a housing network of over 40 locations, gain efficiencies, streamline services, for all including special populations like Veterans, Women with Children, Youth, Men, Ex-offenders, and more as well as streamline various public/private revenue streams. Our results have led to becoming recognized as an International Model for improved overall outcomes, and most importantly rebuilding and restoring the lives of more people to become independent and self-sufficient in a sustainable manner.

In the last decade, ASHF has grown to become one of the largest social services providers in the region. Our services target very high-risk populations including veterans, mothers with children, homeless young adults, and the formerly incarcerated. We design individualized service plans for our clients that address the root causes of poverty, homelessness, and partner with organizations, businesses, and governmental agencies to increase their educational attainment, secure safe and affordable housing, and gain living-wage employment. Our comprehensive Continuum of Care Core Services includes the following:

• Housing is the principal service that ASH provides to our clients. We believe housing serves as a form of healthcare, which provides the first step in healing for a myriad of other issues. ASH offers a variety of housing options and recovery settings, including interim, permanent supportive, recovery homes, veterans housing, and affordable housing.

• In 2001, A Safe Haven was awarded one of the very first provider license issued by the State's newly established regulating agency: the Illinois Department of Human Services, Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse.

• ASHF's Adult Education Program helps clients set the foundation for their future success and supports ASHF's goal of ending homelessness. Core classes include GED preparation, contextualized literacy, basic math, reading, computer literacy, and life skills.

• ASHF's Center for Workforce Development collaborates with companies and organizations to help clients overcome barriers to employment. As the only STRIVE Job Readiness affiliate in Illinois, clients complete pre-employment training, including resume writing, interviewing preparation, communication skills, and conflict management. We have six industry-specific training programs available for trainees to matriculate to Welding, Culinary Arts, Landscaping, Customer Service Skills, Security, Maintenance, and Hospitality.

• ASHF's Psychotherapy / Behavioral Health Program is an imperative part of the recovery process for residents since a large percentage of the individuals that seek help have experienced significant emotional trauma, loss, poverty, poor parental modeling, and/or abuse. The psychotherapy program at ASHF assists clients in addressing these issues through trusting and safe therapeutic relationships as well as intense therapeutic dialogues that emphasize self-exploration and a basic sense of empathy and respect for the uniqueness of each individual client.

• ASHF's Youth Services provides outreach, intake, case management, temporary housing, structured activities, mentoring, and employment services to one of society's most vulnerable age-based populations. We have served youth and young adults since 1998 through our early education, after-school, out-of-school, summer job placement, financial literacy, emergency housing, and mentoring programs.

Since 1994, A Safe Haven Foundation (ASHF) has provided services to over 130,000 women with children, single men and women, veterans, youth, young adults, and the formerly incarcerated. ASHF is one of the few human service agencies in Chicago equipped to accommodate entire families who are homeless. Its available supportive services are offered in a safe, secure, environment where residents are able to establish some consistency, stabilize health, and pursue education and employment en route to self-sufficiency and permanent housing. Stable permanent housing, economic self-sufficiency coupled with social and cultural inclusion are the target for those who enter ASHF's Interim Housing Programs.

ASHF's commitment to accommodating families included those headed by single fathers distinguishes our services as those that can fulfill some of the most difficult and prevalent needs within the delivery system. In addition to assisting adults, ASHF is committed to creating a welcoming space for the children who live in our facility. The family and single adults program successfully schedule activities that will build self-esteem, teamwork, and trust for the most vulnerable of our population. Each program utilizes a strength-based, autonomy-enhancing model of services predicated on the belief that clients already possess many of the strengths necessary to change the conditions which led to homelessness. By identifying and building on existing strengths, case managers help residents secure the necessary resources to achieve the goal of returning to stable housing. Housing is service-enriched with individual programming to help residents meet their personal and vocational goals.

All interim and supportive housing facilities, residents have a clean room, bed, shower, daily meals, access to storage and laundry facilities, designed for universal accessibility, with 24-hour security and access to all programs and services. Room configurations can accommodate entire families, keeping them intact, while allowing families with children an appropriate amount of healing space. ASHF does not discriminate in admission on the basis of race, creed, national origin, political affiliation, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or identified disability. Moreover, ASHF manages nearly 700 units of supportive housing throughout Chicago's 77 neighborhoods, and the surrounding suburbs. Each of our scattered sites includes: Supportive Housing, Transitional/Interim Housing, Permanent Housing units, and are in most instances licensed recovery Home facilities; and are in compliance with the American Disabilities Act, as well as meeting local zoning requirements, and Federal Housing Quality Standards. And, replicates its supportive services at most of its scattered sites and includes qualified staff on-site for oversight and program delivery.