CHRISTIAN SERVICE CENTER FOR CENTRAL FLORIDA INC

Since our inception in 1971 as a non-profit 501(c)(3), hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have been served and benefited from our programs. Our vision is for homelessness in Central Florida to be rare, brief, and only once in a person’s life if it does occur. To move towards this goal, we have directed our case management team’s decades of experience and their best practices towards solutions-based goals we can achieve annually to keep Orlando area residents in their homes and to move unsheltered adults from the street into housing of their own.

The Christian Service Center has two core programs specifically designed to serve our mission and address the most prominent needs of struggling families and individuals in Central Florida. One of these programs is Family & Emergency Services (FES), which has provided immediate crisis assistance to the hurting of our community for decades. Through FES, our case managers have referred clients to other agencies or governmental programs where longer-term assistance may be available (such as food stamps, SSI, veteran’s benefits, special children’s programs and medical insurance, job training, etc.), and worked with clients to develop an action plan aimed at improving their family’s long-term situation. The primary goal of this crisis care program is to help Orlando area residents faced with an unexpected financial crisis so they can maintain their residence and not be forced into homelessness. Case managers also work with unsheltered families and individuals, addressing immediate needs such as emergency food and clothing and getting them into housing with a sustainable long-term plan.

One of our fundamental and longest-running basic needs programs is our Daily Bread soup kitchens, which began in 1975 with the goal that no person in Central Florida should struggle with hunger. Our Daily Bread soup kitchens serve hot and nourishing lunchtime meals for families and individuals five to six days a week from each of our three campuses, at no cost to the consumer. For many of our guests experiencing homelessness, Daily Bread is the entry point on our campus to get a hot meal, be treated with dignity, and connect to other on-campus services to help them back to self-sufficiency.

The Christian Service Center is uniquely positioned to make an impact on homelessness in Central Florida due to our variety of programs and high level of collaboration with other service providers. We are Orlando’s Comprehensive Day Services Center, serving as a single location for all the assistance a person experiencing homelessness or poverty needs. This essentially means that we operate as a single location providing healthcare, employment assistance, housing options, emergency food, clothes, laundry, ADA showers, and daytime shelter. We have accomplished this goal by bringing on six other partner agencies to provide basic needs to each guest as well as programs that we were not previously offering such as healthcare and hiring services. By co-locating these other agencies at our Parramore campus, all of them also using the national best practice HMIS database, we have a unique ability to walk someone down the hall to access other programs. Oftentimes, a hot shower, clean clothes and a nourishing meal help our guests renew their spirit so they can better focus on longer-term solutions. This level of collaboration is what sets us apart as a leader in Orlando working towards not only preventing but eliminating homelessness in our community.