Community Navigator Laura Smith is taking a new position, but that doesn’t mean her dedication to helping Eudora families is stopping, she said.
Smith will begin a new position later this month as a resource navigator/specialist for Children’s Mercy Hospital for both Johnson and Douglas counties. She’s been the Eudora Community Navigator for over four years through United Way of Kaw Valley, which plans to expand the navigator program and bring more help to the county thanks to Smith’s work building the role in Eudora.
Smith said she hopes residents won’t be able to see a major change with her new position since she still plans on doing what she can to help direct people to needed resources, she said. The new position will reorganize her focus, though, she said.
She will still be able to do work remotely from Eudora and have an office in Anchored Collective, she said.
She’s always considered herself the town’s puzzle piece, helping to connect residents with the tools they’re looking for, and that won’t change.
“I’m still doing the work,” she said. “If there’s a need, I’m still going to help.”
She will still be working with a lot of the same families, but will have more focus on two high-priority populations: women 21 and younger in high-risk pregnancies planning to deliver at Children’s Mercy, as well as those using the hospital’s foster care program.
Smith said almost everyone she helps in her current position is a single mother, and the need to help connect them with the right resources has always been a top goal of hers.
Smith helped bring the navigator position to the robust service it is known for now. But over the course of her time serving, she realized implementing long-term solutions while providing direct service and immediate aid is too much for one person. Not only is there a need to help people with assistance in paying rent and utilities and those facing food security, there is also a need to advocate and work for policy changes, she said.
With federal funding cuts affecting nonprofits, it’s made it increasingly hard to connect people with the help they’re looking for and nonprofits in general are struggling, she said. When she used to have several options of resources to send people to, she is now left with sometimes only one recommendation for people, she said.
It’s a job that requires you to be available around the clock, she said. The position needs more than one person to be sustainable, she said.
Smith started as Eudora’s navigator through an AmeriCorps partnership before it transitioned over to a United Way position supported also by other local entities.
The transition over to working for the hospital should be easy, she said. She’s already well-versed in all the resources Douglas County has to offer, she said.
“It’s allowed me to serve multiple demographics of our population,” Smith said. “Because I’ve been able to treat the whole family and not just one person.”
Jessica Lehnherr, CEO and president of United Way of Kaw Valley, said Smith made the position what it is today. Because of the work she’s done over the last few years, they are able to expand the program and bring more than one navigator to serve Douglas County.
It is tough to see Smith go as she leaves big shoes to fill, Lehnherr said, but she has helped the organization learn about challenges specific to Douglas County and those across the area.
“Her ability to really listen to people and help connect people, being embedded in the community, has been essential, and that’s one of the biggest things we’ve learned is we’ve got to be more engaged and involved in the community in ways that maybe we never thought we needed to before,” she said.
Lehnherr said United Way is in the process of finishing negotiations on funding for the program to serve both Douglas and Shawnee counties.
Later this month, they will announce position openings for a formal and extended community navigator program, she said. The hiring will start with a director of the program, she said.
Although the program will look different in the coming months and years, it’ll be built on a base that started in Eudora, she said.
“We would not be able to even be at the point now today about expanding this program if it wasn’t for her,” she said.
The Eudora Community Library has supported Smith’s salary throughout her time, as well. Executive Director Carol Wohlford said Smith has shown how much need there is in Eudora for someone like her.
“How can you say enough about all Laura’s done in the community?” she said.
It’s necessary to keep someone like her in the community, and Smith’s new position will help her focus even more on fulfilling needs of the whole child, whether that’s their own needs or those related to a parent or guardian, Wohlford said.
Eudora needs connection to health, food, education and mental health resources and sometimes it’s easier to see needs in a child and connect them to the rest of the family, she said.
Her role as director of Feeding Eudora will pass down to another member of the organization, Smith said. She still plans to lead Engage Douglas County’s Eudora focus group and do the Embrace Eudora Resource Fair.
Smith said the work she’s done over the last several years has shown her the generosity of Eudora. There’s never been a time she’s posted about a need and it hasn’t been met within 24 hours.
“I’m doing the little work, like it’s the community that makes this work and that makes this position successful,” Smith said.
