Law enforcement officials praise work of 100 Families initiative in Sebastian County

Over the past five years, the 100 Families in Sebastian County has done more than change the lives of just 100 families. To date, the initiative has helped 1,390 families and more than 3,475 children.

The initiative that began five years ago to reduce Arkansas’ high incarceration and foster care rates in Sebastian County celebrated its five-year anniversary Wednesday (Feb. 28) at Fort Smith Public School’s Peak Innovation Center in Fort Smith.

“Today we celebrate 100 Families, an amazing program. I was around when Restore Hope was brought to life by Paul Chapman and others in the river valley. Now we have gone from not only restoring, but the 100 Families program. It recognizes the fact that every family can play a role in our community. And what they do, they bring those families back together through hard work, dedication and a vision for what good friends ought to look like,” Fort Smith Mayor George McGill said at the event. “Every family matters. When they bring that family back together after being fractured for some reason, it makes a difference for all of us.”

Sebastian County was the first county to be a part of the 100 Families initiative, which launched in 2018. The county was chosen for the initiative because of the high incarceration rate and the highest number of children in foster care in the state. Sebastian County has seen a 50% decrease in the need for foster care and the City of Fort Smith has seen a 20% reduction in crime, organizers of Wednesday’s event said.

The model for the 100 Families initiative was created by the non-profit Restore Hope, which works to reduce incarceration rates and the need for foster care. The initiative uses specially developed software that lets service providers helping families in crisis communicate better with one another in order to serve families and individuals in a more unified way.

Restore Hope Executive Director Paul Chapman said service providers in Sebastian County use the software HopeHub to help people in crisis. The software connects social service providers with one another to help an individual in need in many areas, from housing to transportation to childcare to therapy, he said.

“100 Families was one of the very first resources I used extensively to try to find alternative solutions to incarceration and help people go a different route,” said Fort Smith Police Chief Danny Baker. “Our overall crime rate has declined significantly in the past couple of years. I think there is an association.”

Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion said the initiative works because everyone wants the same thing – a better quality of life and a safer community.

“I think in the past, we all did our own thing. There was some territorialism. But we started pulling in stakeholders to work together, and we’ve educated ourselves about the needs of Sebastian County,” he said.

To date, the Sebastian County 100 Families initiative has helped 1,390 families and more than 3,475 children. The initiative has expanded into sixteen counties in Arkansas, said Heather Edwards, Sebastian County 100 Families coordinator. She said in the last three years through the work of the initiative on those served, Sebastian County has seen a 106% increase in families having safe, affordable housing in Sebastian County, a 41% increase in families having full-time employment and 40% in those families having adequate child care.

“We’ve seen a reduction in children in foster care, families preserved, families together, cases where the children never even had to be removed because we were able to step in as a community and help those families before that ever happened,” Edwards said.