Integration Assistance Services in Pasco Holds First Open House

Approximately 28 Attend

3 March 2009 - TLW

Approximately 28 people attended an open house sponsored by LSF Integration Assistance Services (IAS) in Pasco County on Thu., Feb. 26 from 5-7 p.m. Attendees included current and former clients, other service providers, community supporters, program volunteers and interns and staff.  Among the former clients were guests from Liberia, Cuba and Bosnia.

Integration Assistance Services (IAS) provides assistance to refugees by assessing the breadth of their needs for resettlement and finding ways to provide for those needs through various agency partnership so that refugee individuals and families can become stable and prosper.  To read more about IAS at Lutheran Services Florida, click here.

"This was the first open house for IAS Pasco," said Sharon Barron, LSF Outreach Coordinator at the Pasco office. "We believe it was very successful given the demographics of Pasco County."

IAS expanded their work in the Tampa Bay Region by establishing the Pasco office three years ago at 6440 Ridge Road in Port Richey, according to LSF Regional Director Rubis Castro, who was also in attendance at the open house.

"We've had a number of clients in the Pasco area, and after moving into this location, it wasn't long before we took over the office next door also and knocked the wall out to double our space," Castro said.

The Pasco office currently provides space for a counselor, two case managers, a paralegal, an outreach coordinator, two orientation instructors and a program assistant.

Ms. Barron speaks highly of the "genuine concern our staff has for our clients."  Feedback from those clients is also quite positive.

"Our clients perceive that we take their cases personally and are truly interested in their outcomes," Barron reported following a client Focus Group meeting on Feb. 29.  "We seem to have mastered and balanced that level of being professional and maintaining professional boundaries while still exhibiting a personal and authentic interest in their well being."

Click here to read an article on the work of IAS Pasco that appeared in the Suncoast News.

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