For many experiencing homelessness in the San Fernando Valley, a Providence hospital ER often becomes a pathway to housing. Providence works with community partners and community health workers to help get services and resources to those in need.
Providence Holy Cross, Providence Saint Joseph and Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana medical centers provide grants to community partner Hope the Mission, which links patients to services after they leave our care.
Hope the Mission connects patients to temporary housing, clothing and meals. It also guides them to health care and mental health resources, assists them with their insurance, and helps them get groceries, job counseling and other services.
“We’re indebted to the generosity of Providence, which believes in this work,” said Ken Craft, CEO of Hope the Mission. “They believe it’s not just what happens in the hospital that addresses the health of our communities. It’s also what happens outside the hospital.”
Joan*, a patient suffering from a disability, had no place to live after receiving care at Providence. Hope the Mission provided and now she and her family are receiving services as she looks for a job. Along the way she is picking up life skills.
“Homelessness is a growing problem, but in working with Hope the Mission we’re able to place our patients on the road to temporary housing,” said Roland Hinds, a community health worker in the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center ER. “It takes us all working together to address care in a meaningful lasting way.”
*To protect patient identity, names were changed for the purposes of this story.
