Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation, Building Systems of Care Symposium. December 6, 2018.

1. Kids Connected-
Creating a System of
Care for Homeless
Children
By: Gary Elem and Nancy
Radner

2. Why Homeless Children?
 Homelessness can have lasting effects on a child’s
cognitive, social-emotional and health outcomes, both
immediately and later in life:
 Homeless children have emotional and behavioral
problems at three times the rate of non-homeless
children
 25% of homeless pre-school children have mental
health problems that require clinical evaluation
 47% of homeless school-aged children experience
severe anxiety, depression or withdrawal

3. How Big is the Problem?
 1 in 30 children in this country will experience
homelessness.
 Chicago has the 3rd largest homeless
population in the U.S.

4. Goals & Objectives of
Kids Connected
 Goal: To create a system of care for homeless
children and their families that fully coordinates all
aspects of their care, provides an integrated
health home, and uses a wraparound service
delivery process.
 Objectives:
 Improved mental health and health outcomes
 Improved education stability
 Stable housing for the family
 Reductions in costlier services – i.e., ER visits

5. Goals, cont’d
This project will start by serving 1000 homeless
children in 500 homeless families with the goal
of serving all 18,000 homeless children in
Chicago.

6. Project Partners
 Kids Connected has 3 lead organizations:
 The Primo Center
 Heartland Alliance Health
 Catholic Charities
 The 33 member Community Planning Team means that nearly every
child serving system will be working in concert with early childhood
and homeless providers, parents and funders--the core ingredients to
systems change! Members include:
 13 parent and teen leaders
 Child-Serving Systems and Partners (DCFS, Chicago Public
Schools, City of Chicago, ICAAP, Ounce of Prevention)
 Homeless Agencies
 Philanthropies
 System Specialists

7. Activities to Date
 October 31, 2018: Community Planning Team Launch
 December, 2018: Parent leaders begin needs
assessment
 January 10, 2019: 2nd Community Planning Team
Meeting
 January 10, 2019: Georgetown Needs Assessment
Completed