Coalition On Temporary Shelter (COTS)

Coalition on Temporary Shelter (COTS) Mission is to create and facilitate opportunities for families in poverty to collaborate, thrive, and succeed in building strong households, neighborhoods, and communities.

COTS Purpose: To assist families in reaching their housing, economic, health, education, and career goals as they overcome homelessness and break the cycle of poverty for themselves, their next generation, and beyond.

COTS Core Values: Service, Integrity, Impact Human Dignity, Collaboration, Generosity of Spirit

COTS Vision: A perpetual cycle of thriving families and the absence of generational poverty

COTS was established in 1982 to serve the most vulnerable members of the Detroit community. Starting initially with an emergency shelter to address Detroit's growing homelessness criss, COTS today offers a wide continuum of services ranging from emergency shelter to permanent housing. The agency is a significant provider of housing to homeless families in the City of Detroit. It's emergency shelter provides a safe place for families to stay, three meals a day, toiletries, clothing, bedding and pillows. In addition, COTS also provides Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) to individuals and families who are homeless and who have a special need or disability such as mental illness, chronic substance abuse, chronic health or physical disability, as well as survivors of domestic violence. The theory of change that undergirds all of COTS services is COTS Passport to Self-Sufficiency (PTS) PTS is a research based transformative strategy of coaching and mentoring designed to create poverty resistant families by focusing on *5 domains of housing, financial empowerment, health and well-being, education and training, and employment and career development.

COTS accomplishes it's mission and vision through the following programs:

1. Affinity Group - A group meeting held with shelter residents to assist in growth and development of life skills. Topics vary within the t domains of the Passport. The group is facilitated by the mobility coaches and occasionally community partners.

2. Child and Youth Engagement Coach - COTS Child and Youth Engagement Coach is responsible for facilitating coaching and mentoring activities for children ages 8-18 and for coordinating family activities and experiences that inform, educate, and encourage.

3. Employment and Training Director/Coach -  assess clients for employment readiness. Design, plan and implement employment readiness programs that align with mobility objectives. Provide programs and trainings to meet various personal and professional needs of participants and staff including methods to monitor engagement, and data collection to provide measurable results. Develop a network of employer, career, and training partners for program.

4. Data and Outcomes Information, especially facts or numbers, collected to be examined and considered and used to evaluate outcomes. Outcomes measure the effectiveness of COTS theory of change and its impact in the lives of families served.

5. Executive Function and Self Regulation Skills  - Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable one to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. 

6. Goals - The essential component of the Passport to Self-Sufficiency model. Goals are developed, set and achieved in the *5 domains by participants with the assistance of COTS staff. These goals move the participant toward self-sufficiency.

7. Group Coaching - Coachng that takes place with two or more people simultaneously. Participants set goals in a group setting and provide peer support in relation to their goals.