When People in Crisis are Empowered to Take Action

When families in crisis reach out, they don’t come empty-handed—they carry court dates, job loss, eviction notices, recovery milestones, homework folders, and the bone-deep fatigue that comes from surviving with limited resources, limited support, and limited hope.

Trudy Smith, a Training Specialist with Restore Hope, brings a wide range of experience to this work—as a foster and adoptive parent and her pioneering role as one of the first family advocates in the 100 Families model. With years in the trenches of family stabilization, she sees progress management not as forms and workflows but as restoring belief and agency to participants.

Restore Hope is a software-and-services organization that equips communities to create collaborative, data-driven solutions. Its 100 Families Initiative brings local partners together as a care team around each family, using the HopeHub platform to set short, realistic tasks, coordinate referrals, and help families move from crisis to stability and into careers.

According to Smith, action planning isn’t a checkbox in HopeHub; it’s a trust-builder. Many participants have been in systems for years. They’ve filled out paperwork and waited for services, but too often they haven’t seen change they can hold in their hands.

“A good action plan helps participants see movement,” Smith said. “We build belief one step at a time.”

At a recent training for Restore Hope employees and their partners, Smith asked advocates to resist the urge to fix everything at once. An advocate's job is to help participants take the first step, not all the steps. That shift—toward clarity, realism, and genuine choice—is what turns an action plan into a dignity-preserving tool. Each task becomes a small promise the participant can keep, the kind that builds momentum and confidence.

Referrals are where compassion meets logistics. In HopeHub, referrals link directly to tasks so that the “what” and the “who can help” live together. When a referral is aligned with the participant’s reality—location, schedule, transportation, comfort—it feels doable instead of daunting.

Progress is emotional before it is numerical. Seeing one task marked “complete” can rewrite a person’s story from failure to momentum. Trudy challenges trainees to ask: What would actually feel like progress to this participant in the next month? What task would be small enough to complete, meaningful enough to matter, and supported enough to succeed? The answers to those questions shape plans that participants own—not plans that happen to them.

Trudy encourages advocates to name strengths out loud, confirm the referral feels comfortable, check transportation up front, and use the participant’s words in the task title so the plan “sounds like them.” These are not technicalities; they are decisions that communicate respect. They tell families, “We see you. We believe you can do this. We’re walking with you.”

Trudy’s training isn’t about perfect plans; it’s about plans that work because they are built with people, not for them. She teaches advocates to align care areas, tasks, and referrals so that progress becomes visible and belief becomes reasonable. Applied consistently, Restore Hope's approach does more than improve outcomes—it transforms experiences: the churn of crisis gives way to the cadence of small wins, shame to agency, and isolation to a supported care team.

Trudy closed with a reminder for anyone working with families in HopeHub: “When we build action plans with intention, we’re doing more than planning—we’re helping participants believe change is possible and visible.” That belief is the spark that keeps people moving when life gets heavy. And it’s the reason advocates keep showing up—step by step, task by task—until stability isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.