 Welcome to Insight, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television, serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Ruth Sherman of Community Resource Connections. Ruth has generously agreed to share some of her experience with us and I'd like to thank you, Ruth, for joining us today. Thank you for having me. So Community Resource Connections is a rather unique organization that serves as the center, the communication conduit of a whole range of different organizations. That's correct. Talk about the organizations that are part of Community Resource Connections. There's a broad range and in some respects there's times when I look at that membership and think how on earth can we be helpful and effective to such a broad range because we have members like the Community Mental Health Center, like places like North Holmes and Stellar Human Services. Stellar is for-profit, North Holmes is non-profit. We have even a county membership. We have individual memberships and then some of the more typical non-profits, Northwood's caregivers who serves seniors and people with disabilities, Village of Hope which is a homeless shelter, the Northern Dental Access Center which does dental care. And so as you look at all of those folks one would wonder how it is that you can do something that would benefit all of them because they do have very different functions and they do have very different audiences that they serve as well as kinds of people that they're likely to connect with. But it's that very variety that in many ways is sort of at the center of who we are and what we've become in that a specialist at the dental center probably doesn't know a lot of the mental health providers or even about the science center in town who's also a member. And the case is true with all kinds of agencies. You sort of specialize like a physician might specialize in one area and not know a lot about the other areas but every person needs that variety. So just because you might need mental health counseling doesn't mean that you don't also need energy assistance or health coverage or housing or food or whatever. That's the thing that's so fascinating. You have a huge geographic expanse here. You have people who live apart from each other. Each of those individuals have different needs. Meanwhile you also represent all these different how many how many different agencies are you we have our membership is 54 nonprofits but there are in excess of 80 nonprofits in Bemidji alone that is not counting you know the the outlying communities. And so they not only provide different services ranging from physical health dental health mental health and a lot of different categories of that. You're also talking about elder care. You're talking about economic development. You're talking about housing children and families and that ranges from foster care preventive services all sorts of different services. You have the intersection with with state government correct and community government regional authorities. You have law enforcement connections plus of course not only the nonprofit side but also as you mentioned there are for-profit entities that are providing various supportive services and and and how do you actually connect that knowledge together and help someone navigate the system. If I was coming in with my own unique needs how would I first interact with you and then how would you help me to find the organizations that can address the things that I need addressed. Sure. I it's easiest for me to give you an example of something that occurred very very early on as I was working with this organization I actually began working here back in 1996 and so I've been around for a little while and and an experience that I had for the agency as well as for me personally really affected where we went and and I think even the passion with which we've realized how the importance of this. I encountered and and be aware this was twenty years ago and this situation is nowhere around at the at the time but I encountered a person who came into my office a rural office and she essentially sat down looked at me and said I have no clue what I'm going to do I I am in deep trouble don't know if you can actually help me but I have four children at home and my husband just left me and serious chemical problems took my paycheck and his paycheck and lost my childcare because we were flipping shifts such that that he cared for them when I was was working in vice versa and I don't none of the kids are immunized I don't even have health care for them because they never left the house they've they've always been with one or the other we didn't have need to invest in those things and honestly we didn't have time but she was really in dire straits because the next day her rent was due she couldn't go back to work because she didn't have childcare she did not have family within three hours and in fact didn't even have transportation anymore because the car had been taken when when husband left and we sat down we literally sat down at the table and she shared all of that information with me and spent a fair amount of time being extremely emotional which is obvious would would make a lot of sense and and as I listened to her I began to jot down what seemed to make sense to me as the first thing she was going to need and I said to her what is your goal what do you what is it that you really want to do and she said I would like some type of normal life for my children I want to go back to work I don't want to go on to welfare and and live on that with my family I've experienced that through other people I don't want that to be me and so we took things on one at a time and one of the first things that that I did with her is said okay you've got to pay rent tomorrow how are we going to get your rent so we applied for emergency assistance right then and there I grabbed the application we filled it out from there we filled out an application for health insurance it was prior to Minscher so it was a paper application that we that we completed I faxed those things into the county for children no immunizations I called public health and the and the important thing about no immunizations is that you actually cannot bring those those children even into school correct right there's you can't bring them into housing or or or any kind of child care child care temporary child care exactly so which would keep her from going to work exactly exactly so that was the next thing on the list was we I called public health asked a nurse to come up and start immunizations of the kids and ended up contacting a child care provider who was willing to assist with transportation so that we could have two of the kids going into child care the next day actually contacted Head Start who two of the kids were actually eligible for the Head Start program which was an all-day program that they could do and reduce the amount of child care that she would have to pay got her set up for child care subsidy so that that would assist with payment we weren't able to get a car for her for transportation purposes but we worked that out with the daycare providers so that the daycare providers husband actually on his way to work picked up the kids and took them to the daycare for a while and what we found was literally within two hours we had 11 different agency services connected and working with and for her and and with that she returned to work not the next day but the day after and continued working and and is actually living out of state at this point but is still working and still has her children and has never gone anywhere long term on public assistance in order to accomplish that she ironically at the time that she came to the office she said to me I might be pregnant I'm kind of concerned that I am and so when the public health nurse came up I said to her if you want a pregnancy test now is a good time to ask and she did and she was pregnant and she maintained the pregnancy and it was it was years later after that occurred that I saw her and she introduced me to the child she was pregnant with and said to me I have never stopped working and I've just remarried and I am raising a family I've never had to go to public assistance and she was so proud and so pleased you know with that so that is the that is the kind of experience that we hope for in every situation it's not the kind of experience that always happens necessarily but it taught us a number of really really important things we could have had all of those services out there functioning beautifully but this person would never have known to connect with them and would not have known how to make the conversations you know set up the conversations or do the applications had we not been available to help her with that process and putting those things in order with her and I and I say with her because we don't have any authority to force any services on anyone anybody that comes to us is coming to us because they need something and want to to do something differently than they're doing what's not working and and in some ways I feel really lucky having having a background in in child protection services I see what that's like trying to to lead the horse to water and make them drink and it just doesn't work well at all but in this situation what we get to see are people who are who are motivated to do something and we have agencies that are motivated to to find clients and so we're sort of at that intersection where we get to connect why can't I just say that's your problem you're asking me to fund it no not my responsibility I'm not in that situation I have means and you want me to contribute my means to the solving of that problem why should I respond with a willingness to help and and and what would be the consequences of my never responding with a willingness to help I think like any organization public television you know people can watch public television and never give it a dime or public radio never give it a dime but we know perfectly well that the kind of information the kind of of presence that that brings into our household is is huge the amount of education it brings I look at services in a very similar similar way you can choose not to fund those things you can choose to just leave it alone and distance yourself from it and and part of that is I think simply your own conscious being able to to deal with that on your own why should you though because it's another human being that's going to be and maybe is your next door neighbor or your your future son-in-law or your you know whoever the the folks that we're talking about who need these services are not people that you don't see every day they are people you see you might be employing them or you might be about to hire them they could have great influence on you you also might be driving down the road and one of them might hit your car and you or your son or daughter and so you might feel like by not funding something you're not working with these people or that these people are over there somewhere but they're not they're all around you and so it's really a matter of of making an environment for yourself as well as for them that's livable Ruth Sherman thank you so much for sharing the experience and the work of Community Resource Connections thank you and thank you so much for your insights