Category: Newsletter

Bryan Conover, Head Start Grant Writer/Compliance Manager

Hal Goode, Executive Director

Proud of our team. Wanted to shout out to CATS Driver Steven Spalding who recently with his church group went to Eastern Kentucky and helped with the cleanup. Steven pointed out the gentleman in Pink is the veteran of the group, Ike Peterson of Whitesburg who helped the group with the cleanup. Beside him is his wife Kaye. Steven said all of the crew are in the picture except Ilona Burdette who took the picture. The work consisted of the whole room being gutted, new subfloors, floor, drywall, and insulation. The group were able to salvage all the back except half of the main flooring, baseboards, and painting.
Thanks Steven and all those others working with CKCAC who took time, talents, and funding to assist our neighbors in Eastern Kentucky.  More to come…………..much more…….

Our program continues its work from being an immediate emergency assistance provider to becoming a program that really helps the families of low-income change their lives. Although we continue to provide emergency assistance, we also assist with budgeting, developing family goal plans and strategies to avoid future emergencies. As we work with families to develop strategies to prevent future emergencies, tips such as budget billing, paying your rent first, shopping at less expensive stores, and controlling impulsive spending are helpful and sometimes well received. Those not working are encouraged to find employment. Our employment and education programs can assist with small barriers to gaining full time employment or better employment. How do we help? It can be partial assistance with a CNA, CDL class, or proper clothing and shoes for a new job, or gas for transportation to work for a week.

PREPARING FOR LIHEAP Official Dates for Subsidy, Nov. 7ththrough Dec. 16^th.    We will not be using a Calendar Schedule for Subsidy this year. The vendor information packets have been sent to over 100 vendors. Vendor advertisements have run in local papers throughout the 8-county region. The vendor agreements must be on file in the Central Office before vendors can participate in the Low Income Heating Assistance Program. Special thanks in advance to Judith for a job well done. When these agreements are returned by mail, they will be reviewed, filed, and then the information updated in the computers in the county offices.

Pre-registration opportunities for the 2022-2023 Subsidy Heating Assistance Program will be offered during October 17th – November 2nd for those residents who are elderly (age 60 or over) or disabled on a fixed income receiving social security, SSI, pension or Black Lung benefits. Pre-registration benefits will post in November.

Applicants must be within 130% of the federal poverty guidelines and willing to provide the documentation below:

• Address Verification, metered utility bill, unopened legal piece of first class mail confirming the name and address, etc.
• Proof of all household income for the preceding month (food stamp award letter, pay stubs, etc.).
• Social Security card(s) or official documentation with social security numbers or Permanent Resident Card Numbers for everyone living in the household.
• Most recent heating bill or verification from landlord that heating expenses are included in the rent (i.e. lease agreements).

Income-eligible residents who do not meet the requirements for pre-registration (who are not elderly or disabled) may still apply for Subsidy LIHEAP benefits starting November 7 – December 16, 2022.  

COMMUNITY NEEDS ASSESSMENT for 2022-2023 is underway. The results help determine the CSBG program budget for the upcoming year. We are needing a broad range of community members to complete the survey, so feel free to share. Your help is greatly appreciated. If you are a CKCAC Board member completing the survey, please choose board member.

Could you please go online and compete this survey for Central Kentucky Community Action? This survey is for our Community Needs Assessment for year 2022-2023.

The survey allows us to continue to have programs in our county. You can do this by clicking on the link below.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7ZKH2Y8-2022-2023CNA

The weatherization program is fully staffed and has 51 clients on the waiting list for weatherization services to start the 2022/23 fiscal year. The Weatherization Program as of July 1, 2022 is providing weatherization services to our 8-county area with 2 jobs completed, 9 walkaways, 1 cancelation, and 9 jobs in-progress. The Weatherization Program is fully staffed with an in-house crew, and we are utilizing contractors to perform HVAC and Electrical work that we must perform to the dwellings receiving services. We look forward to the future of the new contract year of CKCAC’s Weatherization Program to progress and better serve our 8-county service area.

Our goal with Weatherization is to continue to reduce energy waste and ensure the health and safety of each client we serve through testing consisting of; aliening air and thermal boundaries, pressure diagnostics, heating system diagnostics, indoor air quality, and base load energy consumption diagnostics.

Central Kentucky Community Action Council’s Weatherization Program (WX) is fully staffed with a highly trained supporting and technical staff consisting of: Dwelling Needs Evaluator EA/QCI Denny Baxter, Crew Leader Josh Mattingly, Retrofit Installer Mike Burden, and supporting staff Weatherization Manager Barbara Garrett. We would like to say a huge thank you to all WX staff for their dedication for improving the quality of work and the dedication to ensure the health and safety of all the clients we serve.

Central Kentucky Community Action Council has leveraged funds from utilities to expand the reach of the Weatherization Assistance Program. This year we are leveraging funding from DOE, LIHEAP, East Kentucky Power, Big Rivers Electric, Kentucky Utilities, and Louisville Gas& Electric.

The Kentucky Works Program supports the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the following Kentucky counties: Anderson, Breckinridge, Bullitt, Franklin, Grayson, Hardin, Henry, Larue, Marion, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, Trimble, Washington, and Woodford. Our goal is to assess these individuals to identify barriers, work to overcome those barriers, and help make them self- sufficient. We also have job readiness classes to help with resumes, job search, job interviews, etc.

Covid-19 continues to have a significant impact on both of our programs. The state of emergency that the state of Kentucky had implemented with a “Good Cause exemption” where clients are not required to participate in the programs was lifted on July 1^st, however there are still no sanctions being levied for non-participation until December 2022. Thus, participation is still low. Kentucky Works staff have returned to working in the office. 

• We currently have 10 clients that are employed in the K-TAP Program, and 4 clients that are at a site gaining work experience. The referrals have picked up with the state of emergency ending and the time getting closer where sanctions will be implemented for non-compliance. Our Employment Specialists continue to follow up with each of these clients and track the hours they are working. We served 32 clients in the K-Tap program for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, which is 6 more than we served for all of the last fiscal year.
• On the SNAP Employment and Training program we continue to reach out to these clients and complete assessments when they are referred to us. We had 1060 referrals for the SNAP program during the last fiscal year.
• We continue to stay in touch with employers and if/when we do get referrals we match the clients skills with the employer needs to have a good match. We call new employers each week and keep a current job listing for each county we serve.
• We continue to see an impact with Covid on our Work Experience Program sites as some of them are still unable to accept our referrals. We have 124 sites in our 17 counties that we send our clients and as of now, 67 are open and/or willing to accept referrals due to Covid-19. Staff visited these sites in August to update paperwork and check to see if they were needing workers and are currently in the process of checking again.
• Our staff continues to stay in touch to discuss all relative matters in the program. We have staff meetings every other month. We are now conducting our staff meetings in person.
• We continue to offer a wage subsidy program where if an employer hires one of our K-TAP clients they will be reimbursed for a portion of their wages during the first six month of employment.
• We just had our program audited in September and there were no findings.

Kerri Taylor, Director

CKCATS has had a very busy but exciting year thus far! Our trip capacity continues to climb as our Drivers work diligently and expeditiously to keep up with the number of trips pouring in! Although our trip capacity has increased, we have been able to continue to provide all of our offered services: Medicaid, Intercity, Senior, Veteran, and General Public trips.

We are still waiting to hear back from OTD about funds that we will be awarded through the FY23 5339 and 5311 Grant applications that were submitted. Due to the shortage and predicted wait time for 12×2 and 8×2 larger vehicles, we did request a total of $405,760 in rehab funding in the 5339 Grant to maintain the fleet that we currently have.

We received great news last month that CKCATS was awarded $851,329 through the Competitive Section 5339(b) that we applied for! Some funding will be used to purchase 10 Expansion Vehicles to start a Pilot Program that will take individuals to and from work. Some funding will be used to rehabilitate some of our parking lots where we park our fleet. Part of this funding will also be used to enhance the technology in CKCATS. We will be updating all cameras in our vehicles to obtain live view, going paperless by providing drivers smart tablets to log and record trips, and doing a major update on our scheduling software system.

CKCATS participated in the Loretto Street Fair. We had a CATS vehicle on site and handed out our brochures and Intercity rack cards. CKCATS also participated in the Senior Celebration Day held in Marion County on June 29^th. We handed out brochures and goodie bags to the seniors and donated a gift basket for a door prize. The Seniors had a great time at the celebration and CKCATS felt fortunate to be in attendance.

You may have recently seen me or my staff in some of your counties. Last month the office staff and I dedicated a week to visit the counties to promote CATS and our services and gain more participation in our Intercity program. We visited many sites in each county and were able to talk to individuals and answer questions about our services. We booked 2 Intercity trips during our visits to the counties! If anyone you know has any questions about CATS services and our Intercity Program or would like a visit from CATS to answer questions or receive some of our brochures, please feel free to contact me at 270-692-2136 or kerri.taylor@ckcac.org.

CKCATS continues to hire drivers in all counties. If you or anyone you know is interested in driving for CATS either full-time or part-time, please go to careers@ckcac.org to apply.

Martha ‘Jewell’ Bartley, Head Start Quality Assurance Manager