Participants

Over the past four years, the people at Micah's Way have been in contact with a couple of hundred families and individuals who can use help in moving on from difficult circumstances. For instance, one woman, due to illness, was unable to look after her children any longer and couldn't make house payments. It took quite a while, but now she is able to visit her children and is no longer living on the street and she is even looking into starting up her small business again. Then there was the single man who found his chances of working were getting slighter and slighter because of an eye condition and, frustrated, he was getting into trouble with the law. Again it took about a year before his situation was stabilized, but now he's working part-time and he figures his life to be on an upward swing.

Frankly, it is very difficult to judge whether and when we achieve absolutely successful outcomes, all we know is that Micah's Way has been able to help some of the people who come to us. At any given time we are working with about a dozen individuals and families, in the Family and Individual Services (FIS) program. Each is assigned a counselor and is working hard to improve their situation. Of the hundreds of people who have contacted us, about sixty families and individuals have stayed with their tailor-made programs long enough to make a substantial difference. We can and will be doing more in the years to come, especially after we establish a permanent Resource Center... which is our next big project.

How do people find out about Micah's Way? We get referrals from friends and family, churches and other service organizations. Also we have developed three outreach programs that let people know we exist: one is 'MiCafé', then there is 'MiBistro', a monthly street meal, and the 'Micah's Way Traveling Roadshow' (a presentation for churches and service organizations). We also produce a newsletter called the 'Minor Prophet', and the 'Street Sheet' -a regularly updated snapshot of local emergency services available for people in need. For more information on Micafé check out our Outreach page.

FIS

FIS stands for Family & Individual Support. This is the procedure that has been developed at Micah House for fulfilling the mission of Micah's Way. The procedure is not strictly linear and involves the following seven components:

• Assessment
• Plan Development
• Basic FIS
• Review
• Extended FIS
• Review
• Completion and Documentation.

-Yes a slow process sometimes! Success depends not only on clients working hard on life-repair issues but also on plenty of dedicated, detail-oriented Micah's Way volunteers and counselors. See our volunteers here, and see what each individual is doing to get an idea of who makes up Micah's Way - Micah's Way Volunteers Page

Micahsway.org Video " So you're Homeless, now what?"
See the video "So You're Homeless, Now What?" for more info on what someone new to the streets experiences.