Leveling up: Center for Working Families sites help people increase wages, build career skills
Kassandra Green was tired of getting matched with warehouse jobs. They didn’t fit her passions. She wanted to provide for her daughter – and love her career.
Thanks to training through the Center for Working Families model, she earned certifications in the medical field, moving closer to her ultimate goal: becoming a surgeon.
Coaching helped Troy Howard expunge his record, earn his commercial driver’s license and feel confident with his finances.
Melqui Gonzales learned to build her credit, and now she’s preparing to buy her first home.
All three were part of Center for Working Families programming at the Community Alliance of the Far Eastside, one of 13 sites to offer the program in Marion, Hendricks and Morgan counties.
Since 2015, United Way of Central Indiana has been the lead funder and administrator of the Center for Working Families, often called CWF, in the region. Family Promise of Hendricks County was the most recent nonprofit to join the network in 2024. United Way’s long-term goal is to establish a Center for Working Families site in each of the seven counties in its service area.
Developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the program is designed to help people earn better wages and become financially secure – empowering them to move up the economic ladder – by partnering them with coaches for one-on-one guidance and support. Coaches ensure people are receiving benefits for which they qualify and help them with job training, job placement and financial coaching to improve their net income, net worth and credit scores.
Michael Johnson describes it this way: leveling up.
Wherever a person may be with their job and finances when they start, Center for Working Families helps them get to the next level, said Johnson, director of basic needs and senior financial coach at the Community Alliance of the Far Eastside, CAFE.
From 2018 to 2023, the Center for Working Families served more than 14,350 people across Central Indiana, according to United Way data.
During that time, nearly 3,600 people gained employment. Some 22% of participants increased their hourly wages and 27% improved their credit scores.
By offering financial, employment and income services in one location, the program removes barriers for people and provides better access, said Kendra Nowell, CAFE’s CEO: “This is a one-stop shop. ... They’re able to do it all here at CAFE by using that CWF model.”
Working families today face more challenges than ever with debt, finding jobs, getting training and accessing benefits and financial assistance, said Linda Kassis, director of program and financial administration at Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center.
“When you have this comprehensive approach, where you sit down with a person and first figure out what they need and then go from there, it really can make a difference in getting them where they want to be,” Kassis said.
Accessing benefits, building relationships
When clients first arrive, they may be struggling to pay rent, maintain their household with their current income, and find stable housing and employment.
They may not have the training for the jobs they want. They may carry debt and poor credit. They may not have access to assistance programs that could keep them afloat.
Center for Working Families seeks to address all the challenges a client is facing, not just one, setting them up for lasting change and stability.
“CWF allows us to come alongside our families in a holistic way that sees the whole picture,” said Karalee White, director of family engagement at Shepherd Community Center. “... It allows us to help them break the cycle of poverty in their lives – because we’re not just addressing the surface issue but really digging deep.”
Many people need financial assistance programs but may not realize they’re eligible, Kassis said. Coaches help eligible clients access utility, rent and mortgage assistance and public benefits such as SNAP and health insurance. They also work to remove any barriers – such as lack of child care or transportation – that may be in a client’s way and make sure their basic needs are met.
When clients begin, oftentimes they are unsure what to do next, Kassis said. Coaches are key in supporting clients, building trust over time.
Establishing a comfortable environment is important to Natosha John, associate director of training and volunteer services at CAFE. She’s worked with nearly 500 clients in her five years there. All have her cellphone number.
A trusting relationship ensures success in the long run, she said, “because they know I’m there to support them. They know I’m there to really be their biggest cheerleader.”
John has seen teens who were stagnant after high school find their passions and launch careers. She’s seen young mothers, some escaping domestic violence, build the skills they need to thrive on their own. CAFE serves a large Haitian population, and John recalled one client who completed English as a Second Language classes, earned his commercial driver’s license and is now building his own business.
At Shepherd, which serves the 46201 and 46203 zip codes in Indianapolis, White has seen families that were experiencing homelessness find stable housing and employment – and enroll their kids in Shepherd’s academy. She has seen the cycle of generational poverty be broken in the successes of the children.
“The secret to the success of CWF lies in relationship building: having conversations, listening, hearing, being able to respond in honest ways, helping people level-set and being able to follow over a period of time,” said Johnson, CAFE’s basic needs director and senior financial coach. “True and lasting change involves relationships, it involves effort, it involves planning.
“We join together, and we get a lot done.”
Job training, employment support
Twice a month, Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center hosts an orientation.
Attendees learn about the center’s employment programs, register for services – and then get assigned to an employment coach and financial coach.
The center has served west Indianapolis residents for over a century, partnering with United Way just as long.
When Renee McLaurin sits down with her clients for the first time one-on-one, she talks with them about their goals. Some may be looking for jobs while others may need additional training or education. McLaurin does an assessment: What do they like to do? What are their skills? How long do they want to be in school or training?
They set an action plan on how to get there.
“Clients identify their goals and work with a coach to create an action plan with clear, manageable steps they can take to achieve them,” Kassis said. “The action plan makes the goal feel less overwhelming and makes it easier to measure the client’s progress.”
Common career paths for Mary Rigg clients include health care, construction and skilled trades, such as welding, carpentry, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning maintenance. Mary Rigg also offers digital literacy training to build computer skills and will soon offer training to earn information technology credentials.
Funding is available to help clients pay for training if they’re income eligible. If they need help getting to and from training or work, McLaurin can also help them with gas gift cards.
McLaurin checks in on her clients throughout training – and with the people who are training them. How is it going? Do they need anything?
Once they graduate, she connects with employer partners in the community to get them into the workforce.
When clients accomplish their goals, they ring a bell at Mary Rigg. Sometimes, they can’t make it back – they're busy working, goal achieved.
Those times, McLaurin rings it for them.
“I have spent over 20 years working in this field. ... I was raised by a single mother. I know the challenges that families have,” said McLaurin, senior coach for the employment enrichment service program. “To be able to help, it’s important to me, because I feel fulfilled in the work that I'm doing.”
On the other side of Indianapolis, at CAFE, the health care industry and jobs that require a commercial driver’s license are common career paths for clients.
Natosha John and CAFE developed partnerships in the community to create a direct pipeline from the nonprofit to training providers and employers. With some 50 training partners, CAFE can find the right fit for their clients, John said. The nonprofit has served the city’s Far Eastside since the 1980s.
“These partnerships are very important to us because these partners know the clients that we work with, they know their struggles, they know their barriers,” she said.
Just like McLaurin does at Mary Rigg, John sticks with her clients long term, checking in on them, their needs and their progress.
Two years ago, Kassandra Green heard about a medical certification program at CAFE. It’s what she’d been looking for: She dreamed of becoming a surgeon, specializing in eyes, ears, nose and throat.
She has since earned numerous certifications and is working on her CCMA, certified clinical medical assistant, through Ivy Tech Community College.
Green said she wouldn’t have been able to do it without CAFE. She has built not only her resume, but her confidence. CAFE, where she now works as an enrollment specialist for the YES Program, is like a family, she said.
Green doesn’t see many women – particularly Black women – working as surgeons. She wants to defeat that stereotype and show her two-year-old daughter she can be anything she wants to be.
“I’ll be the next Dr. Green,” she said. “Y’all heard it first.”
Financial coaching
A lot of people don’t want to talk about money.
It’s a vulnerable topic. Nikki Cabell holds it sacred.
She tries to laugh with her clients, hold their hands. If they need to cry, she’s right there with them: “Whatever they’re going through, I try to just sit there with them in that moment.”
She tells them they are not alone.
Debt and poor credit are common challenges, and they create a cycle of financial hardship. Cabell, senior financial coach at Mary Rigg, gave this example: If a person has bad credit, they can’t get that car, apartment, house. Or they can, but at a high interest rate – so they’re paying extra. That then affects a person’s budget, and then they don’t have money for rent. Then they may face late payments or evictions.
When Cabell talks about credit with clients, she never says, “This is a bad score.” Instead, she says, “This is what we have, let’s look at the credit report.” If a person has missed payments, she talks with them about the interest they can save when they make payments on time – and how it builds better credit.
Some clients may want to own a home, start a business or reach financial stability. Cabell talks about what stability looks like for them, and together they plan how to get there.
Michael Johnson talks with his clients about cliffs and mountains.
If a client has a problem with credit, it’s like falling off a cliff: Credit drops fast.
Building credit is like climbing a mountain: slow and deliberate. But if they keep at it, they’ll reach the top.
At CAFE, Johnson wants to help people see that there is always a way out. He helps clients plug budget leaks, get ahead of next month’s bills and build credit one step at a time: by eliminating small, short-term debts and allowing hard inquiries to roll off, for example.
Clients make – and have ownership over – their plans.
“Our job is to guide,” Johnson said.
When Melqui Gonzales applied to rent apartments, she got rejected because she didn’t have credit. After talking with Johnson, she began building her credit and paying bills on time to ensure a good score.
Gonzales, an executive assistant at CAFE, also talked with Johnson about housing options and decided homeownership was best for her.
Now, she’s on track to own a home and hopes to find one by the fall. She wants to stay on the Eastside, where she was born and raised, and is looking for a ranch-style house with a garage, three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
Troy Howard has worked with Johnson for years – first at Public Advocates in Community Re-Entry and now at CAFE.
Johnson helped him with re-entry after prison, resumes, jobs, credit and learning how to manage and save money, Howard said.
Through career changes and obstacles, he’d get with Johnson, “and we’d talk it over and I’d make a decision on which way I would go.”
Once Howard got his commercial driver’s license, he saw the country, watched the seasons change in the Appalachians.
He often found himself reflecting on his life, the revolving door he once faced as a felon, he said.
“When I was out on the road on the East Coast, West Coast, Deep South ... viewing the country and making money, being able to take care of myself – it often hit me. Mind blowing.”
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