‘Making a life change’
A man riding his bike on icy Anchorage streets pauses to get advice. Someone on the phone needs help, too. There’s new staff to orient, grant paperwork to complete. Stephanie Williams, founder of Graceful Touch Transitional Services, helps those who need it most, those who are the way she once was.
Stephanie Williams founded Graceful Touch Transitional Services in 2022 to offer case management and support to people experiencing homelessness.
Graceful Touch, a new and growing social services agency, is a key partner in the Coalition’s Next Step collaborative housing program. It is one of two organizations so far offering case management through Next Step for people experiencing homelessness to help them get and stay housed.
Graceful Touch case managers work with people at the Barratt and the GuestHouse, hotels-turned-into-apartments, through Next Step and other funding streams. Williams, who brings lived experience in homelessness, encourages a holistic model that addresses physical, mental and social health, the same way that she healed years ago without knowing it was a model.
“There are some that are making a life change,” Williams says from cozy offices in the Barratt. Graceful Touch started in 2022, about a year before Next Step began. One early client had been living outdoors and seemed unreachable until she got an apartment. Now she has food in the freezer, artwork on the walls and pride in herself.
Supports are tailored for the person: Help with getting an ID or signing up for Medicaid, job coaching and bus passes, food and toilet paper, recovery groups and arts and crafts. One man who could barely move now gets all around town with his walker. Williams knows how small things elevate spirits too, twinkly lights for an apartment, a prize of body wash at the regular bingo game.
“Spark incentive, spark progress. Spark life,” Williams says.
Besides Graceful Touch, Henning Inc. is another early partner, running emergency cold weather shelter that is housing focused, which is unprecedented in Anchorage, and supporting those who get housing through case management.
“It feels great to get them off the streets,” case manager Paul Siulua said.
As of April 9, 88 individuals have been housed through Next Step. The Coalition is getting nearer to the goal of 150 housed by the end of May when emergency cold weather shelter will close for summer. Keep up with the latest on Next Step at aceh.org/next-step.