Good morning Senators  Harp and Doyle, Representatives Geragosian and Walker and members of the Appropriations and Human Services Committees.  My name is James Gatling  and I am the Chair of the Connecticut Association for Community Action (CAFCA) and President/CEO of New Opportunities, Inc (NOI).  CAFCA is the state association for Connecticut’s 12 Community Action Agencies which serve all 169 towns and cities in the state and New Opportunities is the Community Action Agency serving towns and cities in north-central Connecticut.

I am here this morning to express my support for the Department of Social Services’ plan on the Community Services Block Grant. As you know, the CSBG grant funds Community Action Agencies which are the nation’s officially designated anti-poverty agencies.  As anti-poverty agencies, it is our responsibility to provide direct services and case management to CT’s low-income children, working poor families, our elderly, and the disabled.   These CSBG funds provide the bedrock support to our agencies in providing critical programs to our most vulnerable residents.

Right now, due to the worst economy the state has witnessed since the Great Depression, our agencies are seeing a dire need for assistance to Connecticut families including help with fuel, food and other forms of aid - the highest levels we have ever seen. People who have never sought relief from our CAAs before are coming to our door for help.  Just in energy assistance requests alone, almost 30,000 new customers statewide have come to our agencies for help paying their heating bills – while in our agencies they are requesting job search help because they’ve lost their jobs, eviction prevention help, and food assistance.  These people are in desperate need of all support services our agencies offer!  Our workers are on the front-line in providing these services and, thankfully, we have the information and the expertise needed to provide comprehensive support to meet many of these needs.

The CAAs are unique in our ability to serve as “one stop centers” for many services, such as:  heating; food assistance services; credit repair and money management; free tax preparation and asset development; utility matching payment plan; child care and Head Start; elderly nutrition, meals on wheels and homemaker services for the elderly which helps keep our senior citizens at home and out of much more expensive nursing homes.  As our Results –Based Reporting indicates, you cannot get a better return on investment than with dollars spent in a Community Action Agency through the programs we offer.  (Please see handout on RBA).

Each year as part of the CSBG process, our agencies put together a ‘Community Action Plan’ that specifically looks at the needs of each of our 12 regions.  This plan is based on a Community Needs Assessment that is done every three years and updated annually.  The community assessment and community plan allows us to use the CSBG funding in a manner truly reflective of the local needs.  Further, and especially now, it helps our agencies in addressing the identified needs of our communities at this critical time of a deep recession and will help us to continue to provide the case management services that can respond to these needs.   Also, these funds help provide operational support for programs that have inadequate funds for the administration of many programs, such as energy assistance and child care.

At a recent meeting of the Community Action Agencies in Washington, D.C. with the CT Congressional delegation, our leaders expressed strong support for the CT CAA Network and acknowledged that much of the stimulus funding was earmarked for our network because of their confidence in our ability to assess our communities’ needs and to get resources out to local communities in a cost-effective, efficient manner.   Additionally, they noted that Congress intentionally used a number of the formula-based funding streams, e.g. weatherization and CSBG, for the ‘stimulus’ funding because they have confidence in the current system and the operators, i.e. the Community Action Agency Network, and have faith that these crucial funds will quickly get out to the low-income communities as intended and for the purposes of the funding – job creation and weatherizing units for energy efficiency – important initiatives of the Obama administration.  However, as we know, the stimulus funds are project specific and will expire in one short year, which is why this ongoing Community Services Block Grant and the state Human Services Infrastructure (HSI) funds are so important as our central, bedrock operational funding support.

I would like to thank the legislature, especially members of this committee, for your understanding of the importance of supporting the CAAs - CT’s federally designated anti-poverty agencies – and the work we do for our most vulnerable residents.  Your ongoing support has been crucial to our successes in serving CT’s poor residents.

We have a number of community action agency executive directors here today who would be happy to answer any of your questions.