Quite a bit of chatter, pro and con, has been in the air recently about the Downtown Partnership's Real Change from Spare Change program.

The idea is to encourage people to donate to the Real Change program rather than give money to individual panhandlers in downtown Chapel Hill. Money raised through the Real Change program will go to help pay for street outreach workers, who do what their name suggests -- go out into the community and meet one-on-one with homeless people on the street to help them find and use the resources and services they need.

As of now, one such outreach worker is working in Chapel Hill. The hope is to raise enough money to add one or more additional outreach workers.

The program has attracted its share of critics. Some say it's nothing more than a bandage applied to a serious problem that requires far more substantive treatment. Some have suggested that it's a diversion of resources from the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, which has embarked on a sweeping 10-year plan to do just that, or essentially a PR effort with precious little chance of doing much actual good.

Many of those complaints appear to misjudge the scope and intent of the program. Nobody suggests that the Real Change from Spare Change program is going to "solve" the problem of homelessness and its constant companions -- poverty, substance abuse and mental illness. No one program, initiative or effort can do that.

Although we tend to speak of "homelessness" as a single issue, that's really shorthand for a monumentally complex combination of causes, consequences and victims. Any approach that hopes to succeed has to attack the problem on multiple fronts.

Real Change from Spare Change is just one of the elements in that effort. It goes straight to one of the goals established by the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness -- a street outreach program. The Real Change program doesn't divert resources from the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness -- on the contrary, it's doing one of the jobs the Partnership's strategy calls for. As Chapel Hill Town Council member Sally Greene -- one of the community's point people in the fight against homelessness -- pointed out in a recent letter, the Partnership was one of the first organizations to endorse the Real Change program. Real Change from Spare Change, Greene said, is "completely aligned" with the Partnership's plan.

Real Change from Spare Change isn't a fix for all the ills of the homelessness issue in Chapel Hill. Not even close. But putting outreach workers on the street is a promising part of the much larger plan, and it's worth supporting.

A bandage? Maybe. But there's a reason every first aid kit, doctor's office and hospital stocks a lot of bandages.