Strategic Plans

Introduction to the Strategic Plan

Churchill County Social Services prior to 2000 was motivated to assist residents in their immediate needs to end a one moment crisis situation. Through these motivations emergency services of rent, utilities, and indigent issues were addressed. During the next two years, the Social Services Department started to see the increase of more involved crisis situations and identified the previous services offered only addressed the immediate need, but was not assisting the community to develop the skills to provide for ongoing needs related to their situations.

Through development of formal regional and statewide groups, such as Rural Nevada Continuum of Care and Nevada Association of Community Action Agencies, it started to assist the Social Services Agency to develop in a more modeled approach to address community needs that resulted in assisting with poverty on a larger level.

Transient Homelessness

In Churchill County the growing need in transient homelessness was on the rise and continued to develop into a considerable trend. The need had grown from addressing the issue with a one or two night motel voucher to assisting the new residents to becoming self-sufficient. The development of a rural shelter or short term transitional housing program was the start of cutting edge housing programs to be offered. The program was designed to assist the target clientele during a two week period of time in finding stable housing and alignment of limited resource available to assist on a long period time. In less than a year the community identified that there was numerous stabilizing elements not provided to permanently assist the families and individuals.

Funding & Support

Through other funding sources model programs were discovered, such as the HUD Supportive Service Programs, which had been successful in urban areas, but not yet had been successful in a Nevada rural community. The new identified model was an intense case management program that provided the ongoing support networks to individuals and families up to two years. Through this model the county agency identified the need to introduce a case manager that would dedicate 100% of the time to the development of family enhancement plans and transforming the community into a wrap around service coordination agencies.

In rural communities such as Fallon and Churchill County the territorial perspective had been instilled for numerous years and now the concept of providing services in a full continuum would seem an impossible task. The mentoring of agencies to look for assistance from others to develop a full spectrum case plan rather than an immediate need or just the agencies target service could be a never ending task.

In 2006, the start of a strategic plan to assist not only in the development of an agency plan, but the target to assist in the leadership building of community agencies to provide additional services in the overall goal to end poverty and homelessness began within Churchill County. Through this planning process the first step would be to identify qualified and willing community members to join our team. Read the rest of the Strategic Plan (PDF).