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PARKERSBURG – Efforts to coordinate services among local shelters who do cooling and warming stations as well as provide other services to the local homeless population are under way.

United Way Executive Director Stacy DeCicco appeared before the Wood County Commission this week to update county officials on efforts to coordinate services of area cooling and warming stations.

“The early steps we took are proving to be helpful and successful,” DeCicco said of efforts to establish the minimum criteria and operating standards for these facilities.

The Gathering, House to Home, Salvation Army and Latrobe Street Mission are now working with the United Way to coordinate referrals from the 211 helpline, which the United Way operates.

“They have all provided the requested information to us to aggregate into the database,” she said. “They have all agreed to continue reporting with us.”

County officials were recently approached by the United Way about developing a process on how a warming station or cooling station would be set up and how people could be directed to them using the 211 helpline.

Officials wanted something covering concerns like having a volunteer procedure in place, how they might handle pets, making sure people know where the shelters are and how to reach them as well as other concerns.

The United Way is also organizing CPR classes for volunteers who will be working at different homeless shelters, DeCicco said, adding the first classes are expected to start next week.

Organizers are asking for the county’s support to help cover the instructor fees. They are going to have 20 people to initially go through the first round of training that will occur at the Wood County Resiliency Center, she said.

“We want to make sure the people in the overnight shelters have that training,” DeCicco said, adding they are also working to make sure the shelters have access to Narcan and the training on how to use it.

They expect to be able to put another 20 volunteers through training shortly thereafter.

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo said there has been confusion online as people have posted different locations for possible warming and cooling stations.

“They just don’t get a room, they have to apply for special needs and special problems,” he said of the efforts. “That is what (DeCicco) is doing and taking care of that by monitoring the people who are in that kind of business and want to do that have the necessary stuff to be able to take care of people.”

Commission President Blair Couch said these efforts are to make sure this coordination of services is done in a “safe and responsible” manner. He was also hoping to avoid confusion and problems they had in prior years.

DeCicco said they want to make sure they understand what each of those organizations are doing so when they get a call, they can refer someone to the best organization who is able to help.

She is gathering information through surveys with each of the organizations to identify issues they can help with, like de-escalation training or developing other policies.

“We will find where the gaps are and spend the rest of the season addressing those,” she said. “There aren’t any regulations in place (for warming/cooling stations) so let’s put some best practice points in place.”

Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com