MOLINE, Ill. — A local philanthropist and community leader has given the Moline Police Department a hefty grant to support its new social work program.
The Center for Youth and Family Solutions, the nonprofit which partnered with the police department to create the program, announced on Wednesday, March 31 that local philanthropist Heidi Huiskamp Collins awarded a $100,000 grant to support the program.
The project, created in August 2020, is designed to better address calls and service requests police receive that would be handled better by other social services, as well as establish more service and partnership between the police, community, and other social services.
Huiskamp Collins's gift will allow the department to dedicate more resources to the project, allowing social workers to respond and dispatch faster, ride with police officers, spend more time with School Resource officers, do more community relationship building activities, and conduct additional and more detailed research.
"“This collaborative program between the Moline Police Department and the Center for Youth and Family Solutions checks all the boxes for me. It addresses our neighbors suffering from insecurity around basic needs, advocacy for better mental health outcomes, inequity among diverse and disenfranchised groups and homelessness," says Huiskamp Collins. "I applaud the leadership and creativity of Chief Gault and Tony Riordan and am so humbled to play a very small role in this signature project that I hope will become a blueprint for community policing and outreach around our country.”
CYFS says that the project is going strong, and will be able to greatly expand over the course of the summer thanks to the grant.
