Introduction
Over the past couple of decades, poverty prevention advocates have become aware that it takes more than just emergency services to alleviate poverty. While such sources of aid as rent assistance, food stamps, food bank provisions, utility assistance and the like can help a family subsist from one month to the next, they do not help families escape the poverty cycle and move up to a better standard of living. As Hutson (2004) noted, “social service providers have increasingly recognized that families seeking assistance often face multiple, complex needs and that they require the services of more than one ...