At one point, Jessie Snyder didn’t know how she’d make it to the next week.
Snyder moved to northern Maine from Texas in October. Circumstances had left the expectant mother alone with five pets, looking for housing, work and a way to start a new life.
Thanks to an agency-wide reboot, the Aroostook County Action Program in Presque Isle is giving her tools to make that happen.
Six years ago, the action program was chosen one of 10 nationwide and the only one in the Northeast to pilot a “whole-family” restructuring. The goal is to help all family members, from children to older adults, not just with money but by providing the knowhow to improve economically and socially. Now, similar groups across the country are following its lead.
“If you’re feeling overwhelmed and things are spinning out of control, they’ll help you organize and make things easier to swallow,” said Snyder, who lives in Monticello.
The National Community Action Partnership, which unites more than a thousand nonprofits, chose the Aroostook program as a whole-family pilot agency in 2018.
The need for change came to Executive Director Jason Parent during a Home Energy Assistance Program meeting several years ago. A client’s child saw an apple on the desk.
“I could tell just by the way that the child was looking at the apple, that the child was food insecure. I gave the child the apple,” Parent said. “But there was so much more I wanted to do to help connect them with food resources, and I felt that I couldn’t do that because our funding sources only allowed us to ask these 10 to 15 questions specifically to get the [HEAP] paperwork done.”
To reorganize, staff stopped focusing on individual programs and started combining different services. They blended programs and funding, and started a new coaching method.
Family coaches received training to work with people on education, housing needs, food security, employment training, money management and more — whatever they needed to craft more stable lives. There are now 13 coaches.
The transition required combining multiple public and private funds for a common purpose, Parent said. Now, someone coming for heating assistance who is also experiencing food insecurity can be directed to nutrition aid at the same time.
The reorganization has sparked interest from agencies in other states, who want to model what the Aroostook agency has done, he said. Parent and his staff have traveled to Alaska, Washington and Texas, and hosted teams from Vermont, Kansas and Minnesota. Counterparts in those states are now learning from the Aroostook agency.
A team of 10 people from the Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties in St. Paul, Minnesota, visited Presque Isle earlier this month.
The Minnesota organization is transitioning to a whole-family focus and wanted to learn how the Aroostook program succeeded, said Caitlin Duncan, senior manager of planning and administration for Minnesota group.
“Our team who visited ACAP is extremely grateful for the hospitality and the knowledge that was shared,” Duncan said. “The information that ACAP shared about their whole-family approach and their organizational transformation will serve as a building block for our work.”
They brought inspiration back home that will help them better meet the needs of Ramsey and Washington County community members, she said.
The Aroostook County Action Program has served the county for more than 50 years. In 2023, the agency helped 10,664 households with home heating, 4,597 families with nutrition and health needs, and 677 homeowners with repairs and weatherization. In addition, 1,894 people or families received work and economic help and 527 children participated in Head Start programs, according to agency data.
Part of the organization’s restructuring was adding the Hope & Prosperity Resource Center in 2019, said Heidi Rackliffe, director of programs. The center provides space for coaching sessions, job searching and more.
One client needed a fresh start after being released from prison, she said. Through coaching, that person has overcome financial insecurity, found a home and is on staff, giving back to the community. Coaches put clients in the driver’s seat, she said.
Snyder started receiving coaching in December after arriving from Texas. She said she felt completely overwhelmed when trying to find housing and work amid medical issues surrounding her pregnancy. She worked with Sandra London at the agency’s Houlton office.
London’s help has been invaluable, Snyder said. London helped her break things down into small, manageable goals: getting her college transcripts so she could enroll at a local campus, fixing her car, getting health insurance, finding a home and securing care for her child.
Being more organized warded off panic, Snyder said.
She now works full-time and has seen her wages rise, found insurance and learned financial management techniques. She plans to further her education in medicine or teaching. And she welcomed a healthy baby girl on July 2.
Snyder said the assistance is not a free ride and that she’s had to work hard to get where she is now.
That’s exactly what the whole-family goal is, Rackliffe said. Staff offer guidance, but clients do the work, and through that they gain confidence.
Clients also appreciate having someone on their side, she said. When people fill out surveys to evaluate the coaching experience, more than half of them say the same thing: “You believed in me. Somebody believed in me,” Rackliffe said.
People can still face uncertainties, like when their earnings rise enough that they become ineligible for certain funding programs, but staff help them through those hurdles.
“It’s having that cheerleader in your corner to say, ‘You’re not going to walk through life alone, and anything you want to achieve, we’re going to do it together,’” Rackliffe said.
