Cooperation helps more families get needed care
Access to dental care is one of the most pressing needs for low-income families. Because of the low reimbursement rates for Medicaid and similar programs, children in poor families very rarely receive an appropriate level of dental care.
That's a big reason why the collaborative grant announced last week by the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation is so important. The grant of $225,000 over three years allows Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the Brown County Oral Health Partnership to work together to help low-income families get into a dentist's chair at NWTC's on-campus clinic.
Announced at the same time was a $100,000-a-year, three-year grant to be shared by seven local agencies that work with homeless people and victims of domestic violence, which will enable the agencies to provide onsite mental health care. Given that a significant percentage of the homeless experience some mental health issues, the agencies' new mental health network has the potential to make a big difference.
The breakthrough grants are a result of rethinking the annual U.S. Oil Open Basic Needs Fund, and its new partnership with the J.J. Keller Foundation. For years, U.S. Oil has been providing grants to area agencies through the proceeds of its golf outing. With Keller's help, the fund has taken a bold new step.
This year's grants were structured to reward agencies that work together. The foundations made three-year grants of up to $100,000 annually available for agencies that collaborated on new programs designed to meet basic needs, in addition to $25,000 for single organizations.
The strategy worked: Potential partners sought each other out and found creative, innovative ways to cooperate on common issues.
"These very generous and community-minded folks putting the money on the table suddenly produced an opportunity to do things that you only wished you could do previously," said Bob Johnson of the American Foundation for Counseling Services, the lead agency for the mental health initiative.
Johnson said his organization has about offices in about 100 cities nationwide and he's not familiar with another place where local foundations have offered this much money for collaborations. The effectiveness of these new programs will tell how far-reaching this approach may prove to be.
But if they work, low-income families in Brown County will be able to get services that agencies working separately could never have offered.
The Community Foundation, U.S. Oil and J.J. Keller deserve a huge round of applause and the community's thanks.