Success Stories

Agencies Work Together to Provide Health Care and Social Services

Outside In’s Neighborhood Sparks Project is a great example of service providers joining together to succeed at what they could not do alone.

The project provides integrated medical and behavioral healthcare and social services to individuals in need. Neighborhood Sparks joins together Outside In, the Clackamas Service Center, Human Solutions, Portland Women’s Crisis Line, Clackamas Women’s Services, and the New Urban High School.

Neighborhood Sparks uses a mobile medical van with two exam rooms, a lab and pharmacy and electronic medical records, in coordination with mental health and substance abuse counselors and social workers from the collaborative partners at three sites per week. At each of these sites the project focuses on different hard-to-serve populations, including chronically homeless and high-risk youth.

By providing critically needed services, the Neighborhood Sparks Project is serving as a catalyst to help the community build and attract permanent services to the underserved neighborhood located at the outskirts of Clackamas and Multnomah counties.

United Way of the Columbia-Willamette successfully nominated Neighborhood Sparks for the Robert Wood Johnson Local Initiative Funding Partners grant. The project won the grant, bringing additional local dollars and national matching dollars to the region.