By Jim Knippenberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Who you gonna call, President Bush, when you need an example of someone using her smarts to help people get off welfare? Why, Carol Gibbs, of course.

Carol Gibbs, CEO of Accountability and Credibility Together, takes Da'Ron Tuggle, 2, to pick out a gift from Santa. (Brandi Stafford photo) | ZOOM |

Ms. Gibbs, a 54-year-old Mount Auburn wife and mother of three children, is CEO of Accountability and Credibility Together (ACT), a 6-year-old Over-the-Rhine agency that offers a huge range of services designed to get people out of the system and keep them out. Forever.

ACT's success rate has been so impressive that in May when Mr. Bush spoke on welfare reform in Columbus, he introduced Ms. Gibbs by saying "There's an entrepreneur in Cincinnati who's doing it."

Right. And doing it nine, 10, sometimes 12 hours a day because "People's needs, they don't follow a time clock," she says.

That's something she learned early in her career as a hospital administrator in charge of emergency rooms, and later as a child advocate for Cincinnati Public Schools.

"What I learned at CPS is how much we (counselors, advocates) really don't know about the families we're supposed to be serving. I also learned it's much better to offer a hand up than a handout."

The idea for ACT came out of the "hand up" concept. Funded by Hamilton County, grants and corporate gifts, it was founded in 1996 to consolidate an array of services offered by Beech Acres, Lighthouse Youth Services, Talbert House and the FreeStore/FoodBank, where Ms. Gibbs' husband, Steve, is CEO.

1,400 families served annually

ACT's 18 staff members serve about 1,400 families a year. That translates to 8,000-10,000 individuals a year, a population with educations ranging from dropout to post graduate, from families struggling by in cramped and drafty apartments to homeless souls living on the streets.

"Sometimes I get in trouble when I talk about the homeless, but I see that as a relative term. Advocates say if you don't have a home, you're homeless. But people living with relatives because they've been evicted, abused women living in shelters, I don't see them as homeless. I see them as safe.

"Whatever the situation, it's difficult at Christmas. The world is celebrating, and our clients don't have a cause for celebration.

"And also, this time of year is when Cinergy and the landlords start cutting people off. We have people who are supposed to be celebrating Christmas but can't because they're staring at a Dec. 26 eviction notice."

ACT has a program that can help pay rent and energy bills that are in arrears, but it's a last resort and something Ms. Gibbs doesn't emphasize. When she talks about ACT, she talks about preventative measures - the kind that help people along on the way to self-sufficiency.

Statistics say the measures actually work: According to a 2001 report by the accounting firm of Grant Thornton, 98.2 percent of the people ACT helped get off welfare from 1998 through 2000 were still off at the time of the survey.

That's the kind of statistic that impressed Mr. Bush. The statistic that impresses Ms. Gibbs is the number of clients who graduate from one of the programs, then come back with donations, to volunteer or serve as mentors at the Main Street facility.

"Our success rate, I think, is because we try to respond quickly when needs arise. We have a lot of programs, but if we see some kind of need, we can start another program to meet it.

"Sometimes, all a person needs to get from here to there is a hug. Sometimes, it's a swift kick in the ass. I'm the chief ass kicker and very, very good at it."

Ms. Gibbs talks like that a lot - tough as nails, street-wise, blunt and utterly direct in one sentence, tearing up in the next when she talks about families ACT has served.

"But more often than a swift kick, people need information. That's another thing I learned at CPS - the more somebody knows, the more they can help themselves."

Getting them help

Teaching people to help themselves takes many forms at ACT. Sometimes, it's as simple as grabbing a pencil and teaching a single parent how to budget: "I can't tell you how many times I've told a client that $45 a week to rent a TV is no bargain. At that rate you could own it in a couple months. Then the light goes on."

At other times, teaching people to help themselves is more complicated and time-consuming, such as its Career Preparedness program. In this program, clients with no jobs or dead-end jobs learn goal planning, career exploration, skills identification, interview and resume strategies, job search techniques and how to establish long-term goals.

And yes, clients take it seriously: "We make deals with them. They actually have to sign contracts agreeing to follow our advice. They know going in it won't be easy, but they also know it's a program that works and we're going to be on them every minute of the way if they slack off."

And if clients need an extra tweak after the program, Ms. Gibbs is ready. Usually it's something simple, like figuring out how a client can arrange work schedules around drug and alcohol rehab. Or facilitating the transfer of kids from one school to another to ease transportation problems.

"It's all about need and what we can do about it. If it means staying a couple hours after quitting time, well, I can do that," she says.

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com