Together, Inc. of Metropolitan Omaha

Together's overarching goal is to create housing stability in the Omaha-area community by providing emergency resources and navigation to individuals and families living in extreme poverty. Under this mission, Together has several specific goals:

-Reduce the number of homeless Veterans to an effective zero.
-Maintain the number of homeless children and families in our community.
-Maintain an 90% housing stability rate for all clients receiving financial assistance and case management services.

Consistent, accurate data is crucial and is Together's most significant measure of effectiveness in addressing hunger and poverty in Omaha. Together will never fully impact these problems alone; maintaining and growing a formal and efficient system of sharing information with other agencies promotes effective use of limited resources.

HUD requires human service agencies that access funds for Homeless and Near Homeless to use a Homeless Management Information System. In the Metro Area, Service Point is the shared Information System used. The responsible parties at Together gather these numbers from Service Point to track where Together is meeting its goals and where Together is not.

Together also collaborates with other agencies in its Continuum of Care (CoC), meeting to discuss specific clients, services available at each agency, referral processes, and best practices. This ensures Together is best able to utilize community resources and partners in meetings its goals and overall mission.

Together's First Stop Program is comprised of three full-time caseworkers who meet with 15 to 20 clients a week which, allowing Together to assist 45 to 60 clients on a weekly basis. The Veterans Program employs two full-time caseworkers, each meeting with their 20 clients at least once per week on average. With both programs having the capacity to meet regularly with these numbers of clients, this makes Together extremely capable of meeting its goals.

Additionally, Together is extremely active within its CoC, attending taskforce meetings with other area agencies to partner and refer clients to one another's services. This ensures holistic care for Together clients, and increases capacity to serve clients and meet goals.

In 2015, Together helped: 1,093 clients with rent assistance, 709 with utility assistance, 240 with ID's/birth certificates, 2,915 with case management, and 1,734 with navigation support. With the help Together provided in 2015, we were able to keep 97.11% of these individuals and families served out of the emergency shelters.

Together continues to participate in the Zero: 2016 Campaign within its CoC, a national campaign to end Veteran homelessness by the end of 2016. Work is continually being done to reduce the number of homeless Veterans to an effective zero, and numerous agencies within the CoC are collaborating to identify and house all remaining homeless Veterans in order to reach an effective zero.