Government

El Paso Helps: Revolutionizing access to social services

The City of El Paso, Texas, has launched El Paso Helps, a new online portal that serves as a single location for connecting vulnerable and at-risk residents with a live person for help accessing critical government services. Residents can now get 24/7 real-time assistance with street outreach, shelter, food, pandemic response, mental health counseling, and more.

El Paso Helps is an outgrowth of the City's successful pandemic pilot program, the Delta Welcome Center, which centralized social services so homeless residents could more easily access them. The Center has served 5000 unique individuals over the past two years using Webex by Cisco and Cisco networking infrastructure. Now, that same technology powers El Paso Helps.

One-stop digital experience for real-time assistance

The easy-to-use El Paso Helps online portal is a joint effort by the City of El Paso, nonprofit organizations, Cisco, and Cisco partners (Computacenter and SWS). Webex and various Cisco networking infrastructure solutions support the portal, which serves as a great example of the innovation possible when public and private sector organizations work together.

"El Paso Helps is about a human connection. It is about someone in crisis needing help now—and not needing 10,000 barriers to get it," says Nicole Ferrini, Climate and Sustainability Officer for the City of El Paso. "El Paso Helps offers accessible services and not just a list, but a human being that picks up on the other end, and you see their face."

Individuals can visit elpasohelps.org or elpasoayuda.org to select a category of need and then connect to live agents offering resource assistance using Cisco's Webex platform. The approach helps speed response for community members in crisis by removing barriers to receiving social services, such as the traditional need for extensive paperwork, applications, and transportation. It also helps move the burden of assisting unhoused populations to those properly trained to help individuals with these unique needs (and away from law enforcement and other first responders) to those properly trained to respond, freeing law enforcement to focus on more critical tasks.

Local needs addressed with Cisco and federal funding

The opportunity to develop the El Paso Helps initiative came in 2022 when the City of El Paso received funding through the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF), a part of the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). These funds were created to fight the pandemic, support families, maintain vital public services, and make investments that promote a more sustainable community. The City was already familiar with federal funding mechanisms, having previously used the Coronavirus Aid Relief Fund program to develop the Delta Welcome Center.

When selecting solutions to power the Delta Welcome Center, the City had chosen the Webex Meetings application to connect the center's users to services they desperately needed, including healthcare, housing, food assistance, and social services. The program illustrated the capabilities of Webex and the supporting network infrastructure, including Cisco network switches, to simplify and speed access to city services. As a result of the Delta Welcome Center's success, the City was inspired to use Cisco's networking infrastructure and digital services for the El Paso Helps initiative.

"The Cisco team rolled up their sleeves and brought a level of expertise, given their presence supporting so many cities across the United States, that allowed us to tailor a solution that made the most sense for the City of El Paso and our community members in need," states Ferrini.

Cisco's networking infrastructure and digital services are also helping the social services organizations involved in the Delta Welcome Center and El Paso Helps to make increasingly data-driven decisions, resulting in a more sustainable approach to community services and better outcomes for residents. Over time, the City can use the data to gain insights into the community's greatest needs and more efficiently allocate resources and more accurately plan for future needs.

A model for other communities to offer social services

According to Gary DePreta, vice president for state and local government and education at Cisco, the El Paso Helps program holds "immense potential to be replicated in other geographies." Although many city and local governments have pushed online portals and cloud calling centers for community members in need, El Paso's program expands beyond those steps.

"By leveraging Webex by Cisco," states DePreta, "members of the El Paso community can now connect virtually on video with live help, allowing for a better user experience in navigating government and social services." He also feels that the program can serve as a model for other cities looking to replicate a more personalized delivery of social services powered by technology. Ferrini adds that "the delivery of hybrid services is never going away, thanks to the digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic, the power of technology, and our longstanding [relationship] with Cisco."