Putting you in touch with the services you need is what we do at 2-1-1 San Joaquin County.

San Joaquin County has approximately 1300 known health and human service providers including government, not-for-profit, and profit-oriented entities.  There is a constant flux among these entities, (i.e., new entities, closings, location moves, change of service, etc.)   Paper catalogues are often out of date as soon as they are printed and distributed.  Beyond this, service entities are not uniformly staffed; hours of operation vary and often know little about each other.  Finally, our County population currently confronts service and referral providers with over 90 different languages and cultures across a large area of urban and rural composition.

Our Goal!
Make one call!  The goal of the 211-project is to create an efficient and effective single telephone point of access to community health and social services through information and referral programs.

Our Approach:
Standard 10-digit, 1-800, and local 7-digit access numbers will be replaced with one easy-to-remember phone number “211”. This single point of contact will simplify access to the entire range of community services, for people in need, and resources by eliminating the need to struggle with hundreds of telephone listings, attempting to find the "right" phone number for the "right" service or resource you need. 

Highly-trained staff supported by a computer database and language translation resources will assist in matching callers with appropriate resources.

What are the advantages of 211?
The key benefits of 211 to San Joaquin County include:

• Simple access to all services by eliminating confusion and frustrating searches.
• Ease of dial and recall, over traditional phone numbers.
• One simple number to link to essential community services for people who are most vulnerable (the elderly, disabled, non-English speaking, those incapacitated by crisis, the illiterate, migrant workers and people new to our communities).
• Efficiencies created by reducing duplication of information phone lines needed by the community to find services.
• Creation of indicators, which will suggest areas of service need, as well as possible conditions of excess supply.  This capacity is crucial to the effective ongoing management of resources in periods of severely reduced governmental and funding agency revenue.
• Connection to, and interaction with, the County’s emergency services center.
• Connection to, and interaction with, other county 211 systems to provide backup and more efficient use of resources.

Key Agencies: 

At the State level, the California Alliance of Information & Referral Services (CAIRS) http://www.cairs.org is working to develop the statewide service delivery system strategy to dramatically improve the public’s access to essential health and social services.

At our County level, The San Joaquin County Human Services Agency, with funding provided by Kaiser Permanente, has contracted with the Cultural Heritage Council of San Joaquin County to conduct a planning study to show how this system could be implemented in this county, to identify a lead agency to build and operate the system, identify possible funding, and to build support for its implementation.

What you can do! 

Please look over the following list below and tell us how you could assist with the items listed and email us at: info@211sanjoaquin.org
 

We thank you for your effort.

      

q  Join the Community Action Team

q  Contacting stakeholders

q  Hosting and/or sponsoring Community Forums

q  Contacting providers

q  Advertising and promotion through your

Email

Newsletter

Social network

q  Funding

q  Survey compilation and analysis

q  Community Action Team Member

q  Other___________