By Scott Roberts, Reporter-Times
sroberts@reportert.com
Morgan County residents are feeling the effects of a recession in the national economy, if statistics from Connect2Help are any indication.
Connect2Help is a nonprofit agency designed to help residents of Central Indiana get help when they need it with utilities, housing and other needs by dialing 211 from any phone. It serves all of the doughnut counties around Indianapolis, including Morgan. It is a community partner with United Way. Morgan County United Way Campaign Director Diana Roy said her agency uses the numbers to gauge how United Way is serving the county.
"We like to use the report to keep a watch over community needs," Roy said. "It's a good gauge to see how well we're doing in our community."
Roy said the report can also be used for grant writers, since it includes a lot of statistics they can use.
"A lot of those things are data driven," Roy said of grants, "and the report has a lot of data for people to use."
In the last quarter of 2008, 394 callers from Morgan County reported 551 needs and received 830 referrals to community agencies through Connect2Help. Utility assistance, holiday help and housing issues were the most pressing concerns for county citizens, with 54 percent of callers calling about one of those three categories, according to the report.
Requests for help paying an electric bill jumped 247 percent in 2008 from October through December 2007 and requests to help pay gas bills jumped 171 percent from the same time period in 2007. Requests for help paying rent jumped 188 percent.
Holiday assistance calls increased 29 percent. Holiday assistance is anything from helping with a Christmas dinner to providing a few presents for some families' children to open on Christmas when the family does not have enough money to do it on their own.
"A lot of these statistics are eye-opening," Roy said. "It's like this everywhere,
"But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about it."
The number of calls received at Connect2Help was a 47 percent increase from last year at the same time and a 64 percent increase from last quarter, meaning more and more residents need help of some sort. Connect2Help reported 25 percent of callers reported at least one-household member was out of work last quarter, a 54 percent increase in the number of households compared to last year.
The top five referrals Connect2Help callers received were to South Central CAP, which provides energy assistance; Churches in Mission; Red Barn Food Pantry, Sherwood Oaks Christian Church and the Morgan County Health Department. Sherwood Oaks is a church in Bloomington, but Roy said sometimes people in the southern end of the county get referred to the church because it's closer than anything in Morgan County.
"A lot of people want the closest help possible, no matter where it is," Roy said.
Sixteen percent of Morgan County callers' needs were coded as unmet by Connect2Help, with the top four needs being rent assistance, holiday assistance, electric bill assistance and gas bill assistance. Roy said a lot of those referrals that were unmet were simply because there weren't agencies in the Connect2Help database to meet the needs.
The situation in Morgan County, however, might not be as bad as in some counties. The total number of calls from Morgan County residents was only 0.8 percent of all calls received by Connect2Help.
With all the data from the report, Roy said she refused to be satisfied with what Morgan County United Way is doing. She said United Way has reached its goal yet and needs more money than its goal.
"There are a lot of things we do here in the county, like help with coordinated aging (Coordinated Aging Services of Morgan County) and other organizations," Roy said. "We need to keep the dollars coming in to the county."