Two years after opening its Caritas Center, a family shelter and services hub, in downtown Santa Rosa, Catholic Charities believes it has succeeded in a key piece of the puzzle in solving homelessness: improving the health of homeless people.
The North Bay's largest homeless services provider came to this conclusion based on its ongoing partnership with Santa Rosa Community Health (SRCH), a local coalition of community health clinics.
Under the arrangement, SRCH will open the Santa Rosa Community Health Clinic, a full-service clinic located within the Caritas Center, three months after its August 2022 opening.
The collaboration has resulted in improved health outcomes for homeless people and reduced repeat visits to hospitals and emergency rooms — improvements that help them get into housing more quickly, the groups say.
A recently released new policy document, ” Health and Family Cohesion: An Overview of Progress and Challenges ,” jointly developed by Catholic Charities and SRCH, puts it bluntly: “Health and homelessness are inextricably linked. Any solution to homelessness must be viewed through the lens of health.”
The paper was released Thursday at an event at the Caritas Center for elected officials, policymakers, donors and other supporters.
“The synergy between the Caritas Center and the Santa Rosa Community Health Clinic demonstrates the power of proximity,” Catholic Charities CEO Jennylyn Holmes told the crowd of about 100 gathered at the facility's drop-in center on Sixth Street.
Catholic Charities served 2,242 people in its first year, a 13 percent increase from before the center opened, the paper reported.
In the nearly two years since opening the Caritas Center Clinic, SRCH has seen 4,270 patients, including 319 under the age of 18 and 86 pregnant women.
The paper also highlights that during the first year of operation of the Caritas centers, Catholic Charities “added family rooms, expanded the drop-in center, and introduced a new Nightingale therapeutic care program, enabling them to provide permanent housing to individuals in half the time it took before Caritas (an average of about three months).”
The Caritas Centre's 33-bed Nightingale programme is a place where homeless people can recover after a stay in hospital rather than returning to the streets or the shelter system, and the paper recommends increasing the number of such facilities to help people make the transition from hospital treatment to housing.
Located together, working together
The basic mechanism at work in the Catholic Charities/Santa Rosa Community Health partnership is to place health services in locations where homeless people are also supported in other ways (at Caritas centers, this includes shelters, transitional housing, preschools and other youth and family services).
The policy document states: “Caritas Villages' foundations are built on partnerships, providing a continuum of complete care and services for those who visit our facilities, with access to all resources in one place.”
This makes it easier and more efficient to provide a range of medical care to visitors and guests at Caritas centers who face significant barriers to receiving medical services, from a lack of transportation to a lack of trust in medical providers. In one example, the medical clinic parks a fully equipped van outside a Caritas center to examine and treat people who don't want to or feel unable to go up to the second floor of the facility.
Both permanent and mobile clinics are examples of an increasingly popular principle: meeting patients where they are, said Gaby Bernal LeRoy, CEO of Santa Rosa Community Health, who co-wrote the policy paper with Holmes.
“Our medical team is able to build trust because you go out and find them and meet them wherever they are, and then they can come to the center and find you,” Bernal Leroy said in an interview. “The concept of meeting them where they are is really about building rapport and trust with the individual.”
Bernal Leroy said the partnership also makes it easier for SRCH staff to stay responsive to the health needs of homeless patients. For example, if a patient misses an appointment and comes to the Caritas center for another reason, like visiting the drop-in center or taking advantage of other services, Catholic Charities staff can let clinic staff know, who can then contact the patient.
“It makes it much easier, so to speak, to monitor the clients and make sure they receive other services because we can take them downstairs, get them a referral to a shelter, take a shower, and then Caritas takes them upstairs,” Bernal Leroy said.
