United Way launches Douglas County resource navigation team to guide residents

When a Douglas County family knows help exists but cannot sort out where to start, United Way of the Kaw Valley is betting a new resource navigation team can cut through the confusion.

The nonprofit launched its community resource navigation effort to steer residents toward housing, food, mental health and utility assistance, then stay with them long enough to make the process less overwhelming. Heather Coates, who joined United Way in October 2025 as director of community resource navigation, said the county already has strong nonprofits, but the system can be difficult to understand in a crisis. By the time of the launch, the team had already received about 50 referrals since entering the community in March.

Coates described the work as relationship-based rather than transactional. Instead of handing someone a pamphlet and moving on, navigators sit down with clients, listen to what is happening in their lives, gather information and follow up. She pointed to complicated tasks such as Medicaid applications as the kind of help the team is built to provide. A resident trying to keep the heat on, for example, could be connected to a navigator, help gather required paperwork, and be routed to the right local agency rather than bouncing from office to office.

The program expanded with support from a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas Trailblazers grant, which United Way said would fund a program director and two community resource navigators. One navigator serves primarily Lawrence and another Shawnee County, while United Way continues to fund a rural Douglas County navigator covering Baldwin City, Eudora and Lecompton. The navigators have also been trained as community health workers, and Coates said they spend 60 to 70 percent of their time in the field, embedded with organizations or working directly with residents.

United Way has also said the effort is meant to help nonprofits themselves. The organization is working toward a centralized referral process on its website so agencies can connect people to the right services more efficiently, while navigators help with documentation gathering and applications that often consume staff time at local offices. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas says its Blue Health Initiatives program began in 2016, and its Pathways to a Healthy Kansas initiative is its largest community grant program.

Douglas County has been moving in the same direction. United Way opened a resource center in Eudora in April 2021 after distance from Lawrence had already been identified as a barrier for people trying to get services. That center was staffed by Mary Kirkendoll, a community navigator and AmeriCorps member. More recently, county leaders identified economic instability in single, female-headed households as a challenge in a February 2026 agenda report, part of a $24,000 ICMA grant effort through the Economic Mobility Opportunity Cohort. The county also said Douglas County Thrives, a sensemaking project with the University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research and AP-CHIP partners including DCCCA, Heartland Community Health Center, Just Food and LiveWell, drew 94 survey responses after launching October 2, 2025 and closing November 21, 2025.

The pressure behind all of it is plain in the numbers. United for ALICE estimates 38 percent of Kansas households were below the ALICE Threshold in 2023, and United Way cites average basic annual costs of $27,216 for a single adult and $68,712 for a family of four with two adults and two children in child care. In Douglas County, the challenge is no longer only whether help exists, but whether residents can reach it before the runaround does.