09-17-2023 GAR - Flipbook - Page 4
Homelessness and addication
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showed that this was not an effective
approach, so while we encourage patients to attend therapy sessions, it is
not required. There is no magic bullet
to stop someone from using drugs, so
sometimes, it’s better to find ways to
make it as safe as possible for them,”
she says. Williams concurs that it’s
important to take an individualized
approach. “While meditation, for example, may be beneficial for some, for
others it may traumatizing to close
their eyes due to the memories that
this may evoke.”
“We will ask patients questions
such as, ‘What are your goals?’ Some
people want to stop using all together
and some people want to reduce their
drug use or continue using knowing
that medications for opioid use disorder can and do prevent overdoses.
It’s important for us to listen and not
tell someone what to do. We create an
open space with no judgment to help
them determine what their individual
goals are,” Greenberg says.
Greenberg notes that she also educates patients on what contaminants
are in some drugs these days and the
side effects. “We also provide clean
needles, cotton swabs, alcohol swabs
and Band-Aids so that if they do use,
it’s safer.”
Health Care for the Homeless provides myriad services, including medical care, dental care, psychiatric care,
behavioral health and addiction services, and assistance with temporary
housing.
At Helping Up Mission, Stoltzfus,
who became CEO in January but
has worked for HUM for five years,
says that its approach is to meet patients’ physical, psychological, social
and spiritual needs. HUM began by
providing emergency services – meals,
clothes and lodging – and later expanded to a comprehensive initiative
that offers a long-term residential
recovery program for homeless men
and women striving to overcome
addictions. The flagship program of
Helping Up Mission, the Spiritual Re-
may be experiencing it due to poor
health, job loss, rising rent, or inheriting a home that they cannot maintain
or pay the property taxes on,” she
says.
covery Program, integrates the latest
scientific understanding of addiction
treatment with intense spiritual development. For one full year, participants live at the Mission in a 12-step
therapeutic community.
When Stoltzfus first came to HUM,
he lived alongside patients at the residential facility for six months. He and
his family were living in Arizona at
the time, his youngest daughter was a
senior in high school and his wife was
under contract to teach that school
year. So, he proposed a temporary situation where he would live on campus until his family could relocate to
Baltimore.
“They found a place on campus
in one of our graduate housing row
houses that we have on East Baltimore
Street. So, I had an opportunity to get
to know the community sort of from
the ground level. I remember one time
the power went out on the block at
two o’clock the morning, and I got to
experience what it’s like in a residential community of 500 men trying to
Photo above: Helping Up Mission CEO Daniel Stoltzfus on street outreach in Dundalk.
make sure we have emergency lights
and figure out what we were going to
do about breakfast and all those kind
of logistical things,” he recalls. “It
really gave me a front row seat and
the understanding and insight into
the needs and the opportunities in the
community.”
Helping Up Mission’s East Baltimore Street headquarters has 500 beds
for men, and the 145,000-square-foot
Center for Women & Children allows the organization to serve a total
of 250 people – 200 women and 50
children. Stoltzfus says that HUM’s
partnerships with local health care
organizations is critical to success.
Homelessness Presents
Myriad Challenges
Williams notes that homelessness is
a complex issue with a variety of factors contributing to it.
“Baltimore has a long history of
housing segregation and disinvestment in communities with poor housing stock. Those who are homeless
Breaking the Cycle
When HUM’s Stoltzfus became
CEO, one of the first agreements he
got to sign was one that had been in
the works for a while – a collaboration with the Center for Addiction
and Pregnancy at the Bayview campus of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
He explains that Bayview had a
program where women who were
pregnant and battling substance use
or alcohol disorder could reside at
Bayview while they got clinical and
prenatal care. However, this program
ended when the baby was born.
“So, what we’ve landed on is an
opportunity for those women to be
invited into our recovery program at
Helping Up Mission in our new Center for Women and Children. We have
a floor of this building that is set up
and equipped to be a maternal care
floor. We looked at the research and
found that Baltimore has one of the
highest maternal morbidity rates, and
the leading cause of maternal morbidity is actually substance use disorder
and unintentional overdose, which
reinforced for us the importance of
this program.”
Stoltzfus notes that for many of
the mothers, if they were not in a
program like HUM, they wouldn’t
be able to keep their babies, and that
research shows that if a child grows
up in an environment that does not
include addiction, they are less likely
to be addicts down the road.
“If we can intervene and change
that trajectory for these moms and
for the babies, it’s going to be a critical step forward for our community
and for the those that we serve,” he
says.
