Page 34 - 2020 Healthcare Heroes Program

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
Friends of the Homeless
While This Shelter’s Protocols Changed, Its Mission Never Did
TBy Joseph Bednar
he metaphor is an easy one to draw.
“If COVID was the invading army, all of us here — every one of us — had to set the wall and hold the wall and make sure folks were going to be safe,” said
Keith Rhone, Operations director at Friends of the Homeless in Springfield, a program of Clinical & Support Options (CSO).
The reality, however, was much more complex. In its dorms, its kitchen, and places where clients meet therapists, clinicians, and other staff one
on one, FOH was tasked, back in March, with implementing social distancing and a host of other protocols aimed at keeping everyone safe — both those delivering a broad range of services and those receiving them — while never shutting those services down.
Dani Fine Photography
That they did so, and how, makes the entire team true Healthcare Heroes.
“In some ways, we can’t do anything differently,” Clinical Director Christy O’Brien told HCN. “We’re never going to shut down; we’re never not going to be here. Despite the social distancing we had to do, we’re never not going to be close to our people — not necessarily physically, of course, but we still need to know how they’re doing, how we can help, all those things. Where other places were forced to move to telehealth, that’s never going to work for us. The needs are still the needs.”
Those needs encompass not only shelter,
but clinical services, such as mental-health and substance-abuse recovery coaching and therapy; housing — FOH has a number of lease-holding tenants; three meals a day; clothing and toiletries as necessary; transportation and delivery services; prescription pickups; case management ... as Rhone put it, “the job here is whatever it takes.”
“
People have
to gather
here, so we’re potentially a hot spot. All the credit goes to the people who kept it from being that.
”
A34 OCTOBER 2020
2020 HEALTHCARE HEROES