Emma Gulick
When we had our initial meeting with our agency, my partner and I did not know much abouthow they got their funding. We had heard that the agency we are working with lost most of their funding recently due to the political state, but did not understand the entirety of what that meant for them. Our agency partner started to explain to us that since their funding was cut, almost all the programs they are currently running now fall under grants. Each of the three people we were meeting with had a specific grant that they had their job position attached to and that was how he or she could succeed in the projects he or she oversaw.
The employees told us that because of the funding cut, they had to cut positions in their office. This heavily impacted them because instead of all the jobs being split between multiple people, they fall under one person with one grant. They then explained that the guideline and rules of the grants keep them from splitting up the workload. For example, if a grant said the money could only be used for one person supervising 27 cases, those cases could not be split up among multiple employees or the grant would not be legal. It is great that the agency has this grant, but in that example of one person having such a heavy caseload, it leads to the challenge of giving all the clients the best care because it’s so much for one person to handle.
Our agency expressed that having another grant would increase funding in the areas that were cut short and provide them with a way to restart programs that were already proven successful. They also seek to enhance these programs with new ideas and forms of "best-practice" that they have brainstormed while they were unable to run the program. Seeing how the grant and the guidelines of the grant can really help the agency accomplish their mission and change the lives of many individuals was eye-opening and helped me understand the value of grants in some agencies lives.