Community Services Consortium

Serving Linn, Benton, and Lincoln counties in Oregon. Helping people. Changing lives.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Families can learn about their eligibility for services quickly, easily and privately!


Oregon Helps is pleased to announce its award winning website at http://www.oregonhelps.org/ just got even better! To date, over 28,000 Oregonians have used the site to quickly and easily learn about their eligibility for services from a computer in the privacy of their home, local library, friend’s house or a non-profit agency. Now the site has been completely upgraded and is even more user friendly and accurate!

Oregon Helps is a free and easy to use web-based self screening tool that asks visitors a few questions about their income and expenses. The site then estimates their potential eligibility for 33 federal, state and local services—such as food stamps (now known as SNAP), Oregon Health Plan, Medicare and emergency food assistance. It even includes services specific to each of the 36 counties in Oregon. It then provides the visitor with information about how to apply for each of those services. Any information provided is completely confidential and anonymous – the program never even asks for the visitor’s name! Users can take the program in four languages: English, Spanish, Russian and Vietnamese.

Oregon Helps at www.OregonHelps.org has transformed the often frustrating and time consuming process of seeking social services or assistance. Instead of making numerous phone calls or driving to different locations, consumers can learn about available services in a short session (5-15 minutes) that can be completed on any computer with Internet access. Oregon Helps sessions can happen anywhere, anytime, and as many times as one wants.

We need your help in getting the word out. Please forward this email announcement to all your contacts and networks. To order or download flyers & posters, find a short article you can put in your newsletters, and learn how to provide a link to Oregon Helps from your own website, go to: www.oregonhelps.org/information. Together we can combat poverty by increasing low income families and individuals access to services throughout Oregon!

Welcome to CSC's blog and e-newsletter!

These communications tools can be used to make announcements, acknowledge donors and volunteers, post videos and slideshows–whatever we want to share with our online community.

There are 3 ways to deliver info to stakeholders:

  1. The blog itself, which can be linked to our current website
  2. Email news blasts (blog articles sent via email as eNewsletters)
  3. RSS Feed (subscribers read in Google Reader or other feed reader, can also send posts to Facebook and Twitter)
We're excited about these communication tools and look forward to both your input and feedback for continuing improvement and positive information-sharing.

If you have agency/program information you'd like posted on this blog, please send full text and/or photos and videos, ideas, or suggestions to Janet Hessel and she will take the next steps.

Enjoy!