0:16 include experts and leaders in the space as well as folks with lived experience and unique perspectives on homelessness
if you’d like to learn more about our mission visit us at neighbor.org and follow us on social media at father
Joe’s Village if you’ve been following along you know we’ve been exploring our pillars of care
these are comprehensive solution-based approaches to preventing and ending homelessness our pillars include meeting
basic needs making Health a priority strengthening self-sufficiency and the
pillar we’ll be discussing today investing in children because of course when we’re talking about serving our
neighbors most in need it’s not just men and women it’s hundreds of children who are experiencing homelessness every
night to join join me in this conversation we have three wonderful guests from father Joe’s Villages join
me in welcoming Deacon Jim our president and CEO as well as Dana derderian our
director of residential services and Nancy rraa Wilson director of Social
Services thank you so much for being here great to you welcome can you start
by introducing yourself and telling us what you do at father Joe’s go ahead okay uh again I’m Nancy
Wilson I am the social services department director and in this department I oversee four different
programs one of them is the therapeutic Child Care the second one is employment
and education services the next one is case management for clients that are
transitioning into housing and the last one is Reviving The Social Work
foundational internship component wow wonderful good morning my name is Dana
Dar Darian I’m the director of resident itial Services I oversee all of the shelter beds at father Joe’s Villages
whether onsite or offsite uh to include those family shelters that we are going to be talking about today which I’m
excited so we serve over 104 children every night and I’m Deacon Jim and as you
mentioned I’m the president and CEO father Joe’s Villages and I get to work with these fine ladies here and about
500 other team members they make a difference in in the community in the lives of individuals who we’re blessed
to serve children included and we’ll be talking about children be focusing on on children and their parents as well
because we build family relationships but what what’s unique about us and in this space of homelessness is that the
comprehensive Services the Contin care that we have so anywhere from a shelter bed right and there are all different
types of shelter beds and we’re blessed to offer over a thousand shelter beds in in the community in in various locations
all the way up to affordable housing we build and we construct housing because as you’ve heard me say before the
shelters don’t break the cycle of homelessness they help and they’re very necessary we don’t have enough shelters
in this town we need more shelter BS but at the end of the day the shelter is the a temporary stop Gap really what breaks
the cycle of homelessness is a home something like St Theresa of kakata villa that 14 story 47 home facility
that we have that breaks a cycle of homelessness and we’re building even more of those why because the community needs at the community that we serve so
and everything in between I mean the million meals that we serve on a yearly basis breakfast lunch and dinner and two
dining rooms right these basic Services showers that people things that we take for granted providing a day Center for
single men and women so that they can have some respit off of the streets at least during the day right they’re back
on the streets at night unfortunately but during the day we get to connect with them and provide the services that they so desperately need and then as
Nancy mentioned there’s employment employment is important and that’s an important element as well so that people can gain self self-sufficiency all the
other programs that we have our health center federally qualified Health Center you don’t have your health how you’re
not good for much of anything else right so so health is so very important substance use disorder treatment mental
health challenges so that we’re able to have psychiatric clinicians work with individuals so that’s a whirlwind of of
what we do as a whole and it’s it’s an aggregate it’s the comprehensiveness of these programs that it really helps to
break that cycle it’s what makes a difference in individuals lives so they come to us for the full gamut of of
services and the investing in children programs in particular father Joe’s I know are wonderful and I can’t wait to
hear about them but I want to start if you could share a little bit about what may have spurred the creation of these
programs what challenges do children who experience homelessness face okay um
well I came to Father Joe’s about two and a half years ago and I know that over the years uh since father Joe’s um
started the programs there have been so many incredible ideas what one of them
is therapeutic child care so parents could have the resources that the children need in addition to Children
themselves needing the special supports because if they have grown either in
homelessness or in poverty they come in with various challenges and we want to
break the cycle of homelessness by giving children an opportunity to break
out of the cycle and so therapeutic childcare was created precisely to provide the therapeutic components in
child care and with that comes an array of services including uh therapists in
the house um we actually have interns from a partner University the Alliant uh
International University that bring psychology students so they could provide classroom observations
one-on-one support to the children plus uh parenting classes in addition to um
the parent and child dietic therapy so we provide all the therapeutic services
in addition to the Child Care Program based on the age levels so we have
classrooms from 0 to two infant classrooms toddler classrooms prek
classrooms and now we’re also offering after school programming and summer programming as well so it is an entire
wraparound Service uh component to support the children at all levels and
mostly give them with a whole bunch of love and care nurturing and everything
that they will need in addition to the resources that the parent will need to
understand what the child is going through uh in these challenging situations that homelessness brings in
and what I’ll also add to that is nany’s programs and the therapeutic Child Care also works with mothers that are
expecting so they’re also working on prenatal care and prenatal education
because we do know that’s so important and we do know that when out on the streets and experiencing homelessness
some some of that prenatal care isn’t taken care of right those doctor visits the education behind why they need to go
to the doctors and why they need to to have that extra support so the case management team the therapeutic team
brings that array of services as well for that that Mom that’s expecting gu I can imagine the post natal care as well
of course yeah so a lot of the folks I assume that are staying in your shelters
are accessing therapeutic Child Care correct yeah exactly so that’s the greatest point and Not only was the
building designed when the bishop Maher Center where the therapeutic Child Care
is there is an a Gateway I would say an a a bridge over from the JK from the
Joan Croc center uh I try to not use those acronyms uh from the Joan Croc
center over where the parents and the fam stay right over to therapeutic childhood care so they don’t even have
to go outside they can stay inside and they can just walk their child across the bridge into the therapeutic child
care so there was so much thought behind how we were constructing these buildings to be able to support families um in
where they are at the time where they you’re immediately removing one of those two of those barriers finding affordable
child care getting your child to child care yes so what are some of the other challenges that you’ve seen in the
families in your shelters so you know I think there’s an array of they don’t know how to to get
the services they need we see some children that might need extra support
that maybe a parent doesn’t recognize right maybe a child has some delays and
really educating a parent behind it’s nobody’s fault it’s okay let’s get that child that support early and often so we
can help immerse that child in the resources that they need to be as successful as possible correct so you
you mentioned a few things you mentioned parenting classes these diotic classes what are some of the programs or special
methodologies that you use to address the special challenges that the children
and families face in generally we have a systemic approach to the work that we do
I call myself an ecological framework um therapist I used to be a therapist in my
days and this is why working with therapeutic Child Care is so important to me because it is not just about one
person at a time one child at a time but the system of supports that includes the
case management for example and the residential staff everyone’s hands
really are um on Deck to support a child so we have this amazing system at father
Joe’s Villages where everyone is um keen on supporting children and families so
we have this ecological framework where we intervene at a every level from um
assessments as soon as the child comes into the program we provide them with assessments to understand where they are
developmentally socially emotionally behaviorally the staff them then create
um developmental plans or educational plans for the children we pass that
information to the families so families hopefully will be able to work with their children on some of the areas that
the kids need some more additional support um we then provide classroom
observations we pull children out of the classroom depending on the kind of intervention that they will need either
play therapy self-regulation therapy um or maybe pushing in the classroom
including things like um learning the ABCs or learning the colors or maybe
waiting for their turn to speak some of the social skills that some of the children will need or just simply
provide them them with this oneon-one nurturing intervention that would allow
the child to come down to learn to regulate the emotions and to behave in a pro-social way but that will take a long
time so from the beginning that a child comes to the program to the end we provide them with these wraparound
services that are related to the child but also related to the family then we
find that sometimes some of the parents have a hard time connecting with their children uh
many of them have tremendous traumas that they come in and you add the trauma
of um homelessness um might create a distance
between themselves and the child so we provide these interventions where we do
mommy and me or Daddy and me interventions uh we have a one-way
mirror in in our therapeutic child care has state-of-the-art equipment and
wonderful resources created by wonderful donors that have come to um father Joe
so we could have this level of interventions so in one of the therapy rooms a mother and child will be
interacting and the therapist is on the other side observing and then later providing the mother uh with
interventions with ideas and strategies that she or he might Implement with the
child at home and so those things are purposeful almost methodical ways of
suppor in a child at all different levels but then we also offer parenting classes which is entering into a
different level of uh the social connection and then we have other interventions um like trainings for the
staff for example uh recently I provided a training on how the brain is impacted
by trauma so the better informed the staff is the better they’re able to
serve the children in the classroom and the overall it is about this loving n
nurturing quality that every child needs and more so are little babies that have been traumatized by so many difficult
circumstances yeah the great thing I find nany is that the kids are so resilient yes right you provide the
right resources and compassion it’s incredible that way they bounce back you see these kids that come in they’re so
delayed at the beginning they don’t there’s no socialization no eye contact no Smiles right as a child that doesn’t
smile I love the children’s I have grandchildren I love to see smiles and they Giggles
right that’s the best and when it’s missing when it’s missing you know there’s something there’s something up right but but it’s incredible the work
that your your your team does there the therapist I mean just and just applying the right resources I mean these kids if
they if we don’t mitigate their circumstances they’re four times more apt to be homeless in adulthood I think
the people don’t recognize that right that’s why so important to get in there so that they can be at peer level and
then they can they can compete and succeed and prosper absolutely absolutely and sometimes even children
come in not with the sense of connecting with others but also maybe connecting
too much they possibly didn’t have good adults or role models and the kids are
stimulated all the time and they find it very difficult to come down we actually
had a child that set it out um could get pretty quickly into aggressive behaviors
biting kick in screaming running out of the room and I remember having a
conversation about how this child would come in very quickly from 0 to 10 and
what we learned is that the child entered the program at a seven he already started out with so much stimuli
unable to regulate his emotions and will go only three degrees in his own little
mindset uh pretty quickly escalating and so it was a lot of work all hands on
deck to support this child to be able to learn to recognize feelings and emotions
or how to wait for the turn as opposed to just jump into the uh go into the U
playground for example and we have children that could be very clingy too that they don’t know about personal
boundaries and so those are some of the things that we observe and we um support
every child depending on where they are and of course we have some of the kids that have a hard time connecting with
people because they stayed in a stroller for a long time on the streets for example who might have a hard time
getting up because they were sitting down most of the time and it’s all everything we do is about stimulating
the little brain that is just beginning to develop I don’t know if everybody knows but our brains finished developing
at the age of 27 and here we are thinking that we’re so smart at 25 or at
18 I cannot wait to be 18 right yeah and as we think about we’re talking about the children today but we we are also
when we look at adults right and the family members the parents they’re in Survival Mode when they’re homeless
right when they’re experiencing homelessness they’re in survival mode so a lot of times as much as they love their child their focus isn’t on that
child it’s where am I going to sleep tonight what is that going to look like where are we going to get the next meal for my family and so at that point then
when the the family’s able to come into shelter they’re able to that survival mode can help go away we can help build
that rapport with that family that can diminish and then they can really start focusing on that child right yeah
there’s no time for playing at the playground or reading books when you’re in survival mode that’s so important
it’s so important it absolutely is and more and more families are falling into homelessness right the recent count which is almost a year old at this point
we’ll have another count in about six weeks or so but the 45% more families falling into homelessness incredible I
mean including the children I mean a lot of children out there the face of homelessness has been has been changing
over time and you see these women and and Dana I know you see them in your various programs we should talk about
those various programs actually because these women who who especially impacted it’s so hard to be homeless and then
when you’re a woman and then on top of it if you have children or if you’re pregnant right 44 44% of the of the
women who are out there on the streets I found this statistic really um unbelievable 44% of the women who are on
the streets are either pregnant or they have children between 18 and right so think about that the the unique needs
and I know you have programs that address that yeah so when we were looking at different programs or program
models uh what what is traditionally happening is a single female goes into a
single female shelter irrelevant if she’s pregnant or not right the way we look at our family shelters is you have
to have a child in toe you have to have a child with you to be able to come into a family shelter but we really looked at
it as where can we make an impact we have these young young individuals 18 to 24 the T age you trans transitional age
youth that are getting pregnant and you know up to the 44% um more likely to be
pregnant out on the streets and we looked at it as this is an opportunity for us to try something different for us
to do something different with those individuals who are single scared out on the streets pregnant 18 years 18 19 20
years old um you know I I had my first child at 21 and thank God I had family
support but there was a lot to learn there was a lot of Life still ahead of me and there were a lot of things that I
was fearful of so to think on top of that that somebody doesn’t have that family support somebody doesn’t have a
place to go or a place to live so this was our our opportunity to bring it all together and say hey let’s create a
program St Margaret of corana Harbor that we are able to bring single mothers
into this program or mothers to be they don’t even have they could have a child in toe with them um but as long as
they’re pregnant we are willing to take them in we willing to surround them with other families because they’re all on
the family floor so surround them with other families show them what the family life is like and the kiddos and
everything that comes with that all the support on the residential side and give them a place to really nest because as
we know in a single shelter then they’re going to get moved to a family shelter as soon as the baby’s born there’s already a lot going on uh for mothers
out there that know how difficult it is to bring a brand new baby home as your first child uh let alone then having to
shift to a different location and what that might look like and not knowing the individuals around you so this was an
opportunity to have everything in place for that mother to have gliding rocking
chairs and Cribs set up and ready and their room to have uh comforters and
sheets and blankets and to be warm and welcoming uh for that individual to
really be able to settle to for that you know instead of having that fight or
flight right to be able to sit and not have to be in survival mode anymore and that was made possible because it’s
private funding for this program correct it is priv fing it is it was through the generosity of Cristiano and Adriana Alon
and Cristiano is the president and CEO of qualcom and their generosity I mean they were just extremely concerned about
women being on the street particularly and then if they they were pregnant and just having giving them options right
because a lot of times women who are the streets and pregnant they feel that there is only one option right because they’re struggling so much so here it
gives them the option to to Really carry that child and and be able to get the prenatal care and the postnatal care as
you mentioned and and and see that child I mean and just the the joyous I know we
we we’ve had since we instituted that program two years ago we’ve had nine children born of a woman in that program
and it’s just great what kind of outcomes have there been so the outcomes have been you know across the board I
have a really great success story that kind of parallels the two programs is we had an individual female come into our
St Margaret’s program she was pregnant about 6 months pregnant uh we were able
to surround her and give her the services that are needed she was able to engage with case management um and she
had a healthy baby boy um brought that baby boy home back to the shelter and at
that point she decided that she wanted to be there with the father of her child that program is aimed for single women
however we also have other programs within our Joan Croc center one of which is our family empowerment program which
I know we’ll talk about a little bit later um but the family was able to move into the family empowerment program
because the father was work ready yes and they ended up reunifying with family
and we know that yes it’s great for people to move out on their own but we know that’s not always the case here in
San Diego it’s one of the most expensive places to live or the most expensive place to live now uh based off our
recent studies but they were able to reconnect with family and they were able to move the two of them and their brand
new baby back to family to stay and to help them guide them through those first
couple of months of having a new baby at home that’s really great and that’s a good segue actually into the family empowerment program tell us about that
program yeah family Empower empowerment program is amazing it it’s again the way
other shelters or the the nature of the majority of our shelters look is uh very
low barriers uh there it’s it’s kind of a blanket system across the board where
everything kind of looks the same and but but parents and individuals wanted more they wanted something different
they wanted to be able to strive for something better and this this opportunity came from the support of
senior leadership Deacon you were part of that where we had open rooms and what can we do different um and we decided to
uplift those rooms new flooring different color paint um and really focus walls art on the walls thank you
Nancy for bringing that up their own Lounge area for those families and
really focus on families that wanted to stay clean and sober that wanted to to
engage with work and or employment services that Nancy overseas and to
really focus on housing so we have 10 rooms avail able within our family
Living Center at the Joan Croc center and those 10 rooms are dedicated for
family empowerment program and they can stay for up to a year and that’s where that family moved into that’s really
great so what are the differences they they are I know they’re working on employment they have to be clean and
sober to stay at Family empowerment program or yeah so we we ask them to stay clean and sober um it’s all we’re
not doing any drug testing of any kind it’s just our conversation that we have with somebody to stay clean and sober
during that program uh and then work ready or work able and so if they’re not
quite working yet that’s okay uh where they’re work working with employment Education Services to get that support
and the training that they might need to be able to get into the workforce okay
and also building savings many of them could be working
saving money so they can afford to move to an apartment and many of them are
ready because they have an income they have savings to get out of the shelter system into their own uh self
sustainable life which is basically the goal that we all have here at father Joe’s Villages yeah and to that point we
had a mother with a young mother she was in that transitional age youth uh uh age
bracket she had two young children under the age of five and she was able to she
was able to not only get a job maintain a job job while she was in that family empowerment program but then she was
also able to move out into un unsubsidized housing so housing with no
subsidy no Section 8 voucher was able to find housing for her and her two children which is great yeah which is
great do you see that the availability of the family empowerment program motivates the other folks in the family
Living Center to that well that’s a goal and I believe that the program was created because it
is an option for many families that are ready to move away from the system and
into their own home but it was also created to provide others an incentive
for them to be motivated and say I want to be in those uh rooms I want to be using that Lounge I want to be able to
get out of the shelter system so it is really the more families that get to
exit the family empowerment program and others that get to be into the the family empowerment program and that’s
how we measure our our success they are being motivated to get
out of the shelter system into a more Supportive Service yeah and and to that point that’s a great Point Maggie and
and Nancy is because we strategically put those family empowerment rooms right
next to right in the middle and that community room has an array of Windows surrounding it so you can look in but
it’s right next to that bridge that I was talking about earlier to get to therapeutic childcare and there’s artart
on the walls like Nancy was talking about earlier it’s very beautiful and very relaxing and so then that way folks
when walking through can be like what is this what is this over here I want to I want to come here and it’s a perfect
opportunity for us as residential staff for nany’s team and case management to
be able to talk to those folks about what that looks like and it points to the uniqueness of our programs and it’s
not a one- siiz fit T and this is a perfect example of that the Genesis of this program was because we were
listening to those who we serve and they were clamoring for this type of a program they wanted a sober living area
they wanted and a lot of them have been in in substances before they didn’t want
to be around that element right so we were being responsive to them and meeting them where they are and that’s so very important right so that’s the
Genesis of this program and that’s what we hope for others that said most of our of our beds are are not sober beds right
most of our beds again being responsive to those individuals who are at different points of Journey out of
homelessness and they still need that other support some of them may be on substances right but we hey we’re here
for you as well that’s the uniqueness of about father Joe’s Villages right we meet people where they are absolutely
yeah and we basically share the same families the same children um but we
serve them in very different ways whereas uh Dana’s Department serves the
families in in the shelter we serve them through case management employment and
therapeutic child care and the case management component part of the social services department it’s very unique we
don’t have like a cookie catter approach to serving the clients every client comes with very different sets of
challenges and expectations and goals for themselves but the goals of other Joe’s Villages are to help them with
gaining employment savings and going into their own homes getting out of
homelessness and so we tellor the case management based on the Family’s needs
and for the families that are in therapeutic child care it is all about connecting them to the program but also
connecting them to the therapeutic services within the program and even outside with Behavioral Health Recovery
Services the medical clinic um but also is a um a two-way communication with the
residential staff about the needs that the clients may have about the needs of a child provide ing them with resources
out there in the community uh referrals for evaluations or for additional
opportunities that they will need including taking them to the employment and education program for them to be
able to have training and save money and work fre closely with the case management for them to be able to um
meet the goals that they have for themselves so it’s a very comprehensive all again all hands on deck of all of us
at different levels uh with different Staffing um possibilities to support all the
needs of the clients come in with especially the little ones right and as was said before with the uniqueness of
this program and and our some of our other programs as well philanthropy is what comes into play right because a lot
of these types of programs are not uh government funded right so that’s where philanthropy I mentioned the generosity
of Cristiano and Adriana amen and then others who step up as well right because we talk to them about about these types
of programs they get so excited right because they know they can make a difference in the lives of individuals and then they they they support us right
they support us in our efforts and it’s great trying different things absolutely
yeah especially because our staff our Frontline staff they see what the true needs are you know the Public Funding is
wonderful we need it you know we need to reach as many people as possible with those low barrier shelters but we
identify these real needs like the needs of a pregnant woman or the you know sober living beds those are real needs
and so thankfully to the generosity of our donors we to explore that if we didn’t have some of this private funding
at therapeutic child care we wouldn’t be able to do some of the things that we beginning to do now we are going to hire
a part-time speech therapist because we the field outside the kids would have to
go through tremendous waiting list not only we have to work with the families for them to finally warm up to the idea
that maybe my kid is having some delays and to be able to refer them out and
they’re ready to receive the services but now they get into a big waiting list so now we should be able to evaluate the
children and serve them in house as we are beginning to assess them uh instead
of having them wait a long time up to almost 6 months for them to be able to receive speech therapy services but we
also have some other Partnerships with other organizations to be able to evaluate our kids too but being able to
provide that service inh housee it is because of the generous donation of some
of the special care and attention that they have because you know of our familiarity with the population yeah
yeah and that’s where the collaboration between the two teams comes together right because there’s a lot of times where case management isn’t seeing
everything that happens throughout the day there’s residential staff is 24/7 365 days a year there’s no day that they
have off right and so they’re really able to engage with those families when they’re having those concerns uh
parenting when a when a parent is maybe frustrated with their child and not making the best decisions in the moment
um if they’re seeing delays that maybe case management wouldn’t necessarily see in an hour session so really being able
to collaborate and work closely together on what that looks like okay it’s critical it’s critical and I know we’ve
been having a lot of holiday events as of recent did you want to share what happened just this morning yeah it was
amazing so the ladies Guild uh comes together every year to support our little ones over in our shelters so we
have a currently we have 104 little ones under the age of 18 um and they the
ladies Guild gave a specific amount of money a pretty good amount of money uh per child to go shopping so what happens
is the ladies Guild supports a chartered bus uh we we pick a local Walmart in
National City this is where we went this year and uh the parents one parent per
household gets on the bus at 5:30 in the morning therapeutic Child Care opens up
early to be able to support those kids and uh parents get on the bus there were 18 families today we’ll have another
round tomorrow of 21 families that’ll get on the bus uh for those families
that are working or not able to come we’ll shop for them so they create their lists uh they get paired up with a
ladies guild member uh if they we had Spanish-speaking ladies Guild members for those families that spoke Spanish
primar primarily Spanish and they were out and about all over the Walmart it
was so fun to watch those families get in line uh Deacon it was so fun to even
watch the Cashers that get so excited about uh getting down to that last penny
and making sure those kids got every little knick-knack and gift that was on their list it’s great so so I’m going to
take the opportunity for some sh shout outs one to Walmart as you mentioned they do a great job by us I mean they
really it’s not just making it available I mean they as you say even the cashiers get into it right they all from the
management down and so I’m really happy at at that and and appreciative of Walmart and and their efforts in this
regard and the ladies Guild my gosh the ladies Guild over the years 40 years now they are there for us I mean at at a
events especially for the children this is a prime example for birthdays of Childrens and so forth they’re just there constantly for us and and and and
it’s great to have them any opportunity I get to spend spend with them it’s it’s time well spent so so yeah shout out to
them as well it’s great it’s a it’s a wonderful event then they came back and didn’t they wrap the gifts this morning afterwards in the village yeah yeah they
wrapped the gifts um and they wrap the gifts they help W the parents come down
they help WRA the the gifts with the parents and uh they have some sandwiches
and hot cocoa and things of that nature so uh to go back a little bit I think
because I use acronyms so much and and I wasn’t really thinking about it as we’re talking on this podcast people are
probably wondering what the ladies Guild is right so so as we go back the ladies Guild is a Catholic organization that
comes together to be able to support uh folks in need so uh they they have
worked with us like you said for a long time and specific to Father Joe’s
Villages so it’s a Catholic organ organization I I mean you don’t have to be Catholic to be in it but it was with
the Genesis was back when father Joe first started I mean he gathered a couple of ladies and now it’s 200 strong
right so it’s andwhere they even support the clothing closet that we have
available in the employment and education program right for clients who are ready the Dress for Success right
addess yeah absolutely they are all over the village you’re absolutely right in a great way yeah so I guess another shout
out also is to Sundance Sundance came through for their chartered buses and gave us a huge discount just a couple
hundred a day for a bus for a huge charter bus with their driver so it was
really great for them and this is not their first time doing this for us right they’ve done this multiple times before
Co it’s a testament to what we do what you do every day it’s infectious you know this involvement these special
events it’s not something you can buy at a store that feeling that you get when you’re giving back when you’re helping when you’re part of the solutions so
that’s wonderful thanks for sharing that yeah what don’t we I love to share by the way as part of these podcasts I love
to share stories right I you have loads of stories if you have one or two you want to share with us about individuals
you know that don’t mind their names being used and so forth that was so I know that some that come to my mind but
I rather that you share them for instance I I think of Amber right the story of Amber I don’t even want to share the story of
Amber you want to pick up on Amber or Amber has been in every program at father
Joe’s basically yes she is in the family’s team has been part of the
residential program um has two daughters in therapeutic child care and um started
out very nervous herself about sharing of her life now I believe she’s one great spokesperson about the services
that we provide and uh she I understand I believe that she also receives other
supports wraparound supports not only about therapeutic child care but her own supportive uh services with therapy as
well employment she has been connected with our employment program was she in
the cup instruction program I’m trying to remember the culinary art she was a peer support special support specialist
that’s the one yes that’s the one she’s she graduated she’s so proud because she wants to be a peer support so that she can support other other individuals
going through the same thing and and and it dates back to the fact that her parents were addicted to substances
right and so she got addicted to substances just before she finally had that breakthrough she overdosed on the
streets right fanol it took six nooon dosages to bring her back think about
that but it revived her and then her husband came down with a number of strokes and we supported the husband
she’s so she is someone who’s so appreciative of Father Joe’s Villages because like you said she’s touched pretty much every program and her
husband is passed at this point in time I mean but she but she really she lost her children yeah now she’s regained her
children right and she’s a great mom she really is a great mom she’s incredible but she’s committed and and she just said if not for father Joe’s Villages
her her children would be orphans now is what she says so she’s she’s incredible
incredibly appreciative and yet she’s the one who’s done it right I mean she’s a strong woman I mean she really is and
we’ve provided the resources but I but I tell her how proud I am of her right how proud We Are of her because she’s tapped
those resources and it was hard for her as you can imagine it was very hard course recovery is very difficult
especially when you have so much trauma and I believe she made a commitment the
last time that she came to life that her kids will not go through what she has gone through right she’s an incredible
partner at therapeutic child care she participates in almost everything that we invite her to because it is important
for her children right she’s a very committed parent and a great role model for many older mothers out there but see
how things turned around the right resources right but she was lost and and one of the things she says about father
Jo’s Village she says many things but one is that we didn’t give up on her because it wasn’t easy and there were lapses right and that’s the thing you
don’t give up right you you you stay with individuals in their on their Journey beautiful Testament as to how
you can break the cycle of homelessness yeah right really is and it’s it’s a true Testament also that people get to
in in shelter people get to gain their name back right they’re so lost in the system of just another number just
another statistic we’re able to build that rapport with folks and be able to give them their name back be able to
make them proud of who they are and what they’re doing and what they’re here to accomplish getting their children back
whatever that might look like for them to move forward in a positive manner right right beautiful it is beautiful
well thank you so much not just for your time here but for the really truly meaningful work that you do every day
absolutely there is so much more to talk about right I know we go go on and on I
really think we’re the Blessed ones to be able to be here to be able to support our teams to be able to watch those children grow and Thrive and and the
adults right to try something different this is an opportunity that they’ve had that hasn’t been working for them
necessarily in the past and they get to come in and try something different right yeah thank you thank you and thank
you for listening our next episode of neighbors helping neighbors will feature our strengthening self-sufficiency
pillar of care we’ll explore our education and employment services
our caps program our steps program and our beloved culinary arts program we’ll
see you then how are you going to get involved this year look for our year end match campaign that doubles the impact
of your donation all donations will be matched dollar for dollar up to
250,000 you can make a difference by donating cash volunteering donating HomeGoods or clothing shopping in our
thrift stores or engaging in plan giving take action today at neighbor.org
we are all neighbors helping neighbors and together we can do better
