This article was originally published by TheUCNow.com and can be found here.
UCHRA is transitioning its Empower Upper Cumberland initiative into a permanent mentorship model as the original pilot funding comes to an end.
UCDD and UCHRA Executive Director Mark Farley said the state provided a $1 million extension beginning in November to help with the transition. The agency is also pursuing funding from national foundations and federal sources.
“One of the things we’ve learned going through the last three or four years is it’s not a check that we give to somebody that makes a difference in their life,” Farley said. “It’s the contacts, it’s the knowledge, it’s the mentoring that brings the most benefit to the family in instilling confidence in them.”
Farley said mentorship will now be incorporated into services offered through UCHRA’s existing county offices rather than operating as a separate enrollment program. The change will likely reduce the number of families the agency can serve because of staff time constraints.
“Too many of our young working families have nobody that they can rely upon to get that knowledge as they move up the economic ladder,” Farley said. “The word we’ve heard over and over again from these 900 families is that you helped me have confidence that I’m on the right track.”
Farley said Empower Upper Cumberland began in 2022 through a $25 million TANF Opportunity Act grant. More than 900 families across 14 counties have participated during the pilot.
“A lot of the families we’ve been working with are on some type of public assistance,” Farley said. “So that they can make up to a certain amount; if they make a dollar more, they start losing those state and federal benefits. That’s a real thing, and it’s something that paralyzes some of our families because they can take a huge step back by taking an additional 25-cent raise an hour at their current job; they will actually end up losing money because they lose the state or federal programs and they’ve got to overcome that.”
Farley said the pilot showed that moving families toward greater financial stability did not always require additional education. In some cases, participants needed help finding better employment or navigating the loss of public benefits as their income increased.
“Usually if you do what you’re supposed to do and you do it well and you produce results, the money will usually follow,” Farley said. “And we’ve got faith that’s going to happen in this case as well.”
Farley said the Empower workforce has already been reduced by about 50 percent as the original grant winds down. Many of those employees have moved into other UCHRA positions or found jobs with state departments and other organizations.
“This was an opportunity for us all to come together as different organizations that love this region and want to see it do better,” Farley said. “And the Development District and Human Resource Agency, while our names were on the contract with the state, it was truly a regional effort with multiple organizations. And we would not have been successful if we had not all been in this together.”
Partners have included the Cookeville Regional Hospital Foundation, Highlands Economic Partnership, Workforce Connections, WCTE, and Tennessee Tech.
