![$logo['alt']](https://srhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/srch-logo-1.png){kind=logo}
Caritas: United in Health and Home
A powerful partnership offering transformative services
On August 15th, Santa Rosa Community Health (SRCH) and Catholic Charities co-hosted an open house at our Caritas Campus and the Caritas Center. This event, United in Health and Home, highlighted our shared commitment to a healthy community where all people can achieve their full potential for health and well-being.
Community leaders, partners, and elected officials were invited to learn about the comprehensive programs offered at Caritas and tour SRCH’s Caritas clinic and mobile clinic, the drop-in center, and the 33-bed Nightingale recuperative care facility. Event speakers included SRCH’s CEO Gaby Bernal Leroi, Catholic Charities’ CEO Jennielynn Holmes, Congressman Mike Thompson, and Council Member Chris Rogers. They stressed the strong connection between health and housing, affirming the impact of the innovative services and life-changing care offered at Caritas.
The event also introduced a policy paper co-authored by SRCH and Catholic Charities, United in Health and Home: A Progress and Challenges Brief. This paper (linked here and shown below) shares our successes and challenges since Caritas opened and draws the “inextricable connection between health and homelessness: to solve homelessness, we must examine it through the health lens.”
Gaby Bernal Leroi noted, “Both the permanent and the mobile clinics are examples of the increasingly favored principle of meeting clients where they are. It allows our medical team to build trust because they are out there looking for [the people in need of care], available to them wherever they are. And then they can also come and find you at the center.”
“The ‘meeting-them-where-they’re-at’ concept is about familiarity and building trust with the individual.”
—Gaby Bernal Leroi
Bernal Leroi went on to explain how the partnership makes it easier for SRCH staff to be better aware of the health needs of patients experiencing homelessness. For example, if a patient misses an appointment and shows up at Caritas Center for other reasons—such as visiting the drop-in center or using other services—Catholic Charities staff can alert clinic personnel, who can then reach out to the patient.” You can read more about this event in the Press Democrat.
To learn more about this partnership, read the complete policy paper below.
FINAL-United-in-Health-and-Home-Policy-Paper