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Chapter 8: Support Services Coordinated with the transportation recommendations above, provide free transit passes to all older students and ensure that school buses serve all younger children at homeless service and housing sites. - Give waiting list priority to homeless children for the County extended care program available from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., weekdays. Topic 5 Counseling and Life Skills Support Activities For many people, the life skills needed to be successful and happy are learned in childhood from parents and other family members. For those from dysfunctional family backgrounds, or those without families, these skills were never learned. For others recovering from mental illness or alcohol and other drug addiction, skills once learned have long been lost and need to -- be re-learned. Resources to teach these skills to adults are limited, however. Life skills range from basic literacy training, to pre job training skills such as how to get along -- with other people and how to present oneself, to how to maintain housing and be a good neighbor. Without these skills, it is not possible for a homeless family or individual to become self sufficient through employment, or to obtain and maintain even the most basic ~~~ housing. These skills are the foundation on which the other aspects of self sufficiency and independence are built, not an optional supplement to other services or housing. Life skills training needs to be integrated at every level of service along the Continuum of Care, and -~ elevated to commonplace so as to remove the additional stigma of needing interpersonal support and life skills training. • Maintain and expand counseling and life skills support activities. Support and expand counseling and life skills support activities needed by homeless people to help themselves overcome personal crises and life issues that often contribute to, perpetuate, or result from homelessness. Action Stens Case management/service coordination Maintain existing homeless service programs that provide needed activities, ~- such as the following: • Peer counseling, information, and referral • 24-hour peer crisis counseling ___ • Family counseling • Child-focused counseling including play and art therapy • Parenting classes • Support groups and 12-step groups • Money management and budget counseling _ __, • Civic rights and responsibilities Alameda County-Wide Homeless Continuum of Care Plan: April 1997 __ 110