Journey Home Friends,
I wanted to provide an update to you on the status of our emergency planning and disaster response to COVID-19 in the Capital region of Connecticut as we work to care for our most vulnerable population. To our knowledge, no one has tested positive yet for COVID-19 in any of the emergency shelters or warming centers in the region, but we expect that we will see this very soon. Journey Home has worked with our many housing and shelter partner agencies, health care providers, the local health departments, municipalities, state partners, and emergency planning points of contact to accomplish the following:
- Ensure that every shelter in the region understands the protocols for how to contact the hospitals and health departments if someone develops symptoms of COVID-19
- Ensure that there are separate isolation locations for people to stay while they await their test results, as well as quarantine locations for people who test positive to COVID-19
- Most shelters in Greater Hartford have made their spaces open 24/7 to guests, providing meals, and are encouraging individuals to stay in during the day to prevent the spread of COVID-19
- In an effort to de-concentrate the shelters, we have worked with our partners to relocate 35 non-symptomatic elderly and immunocompromised individuals and families to area hotels to try to prevent them from contracting COVID-19. To further de-concentrate the shelters, Journey Home has been identifying and working with additional hotels and area churches to potentially place more individuals, including more elderly and immunocompromised individuals
- Journey Home has been collecting a variety of supplies that are urgently needed by our area shelters
- Keep communication flowing with coordinating agencies in other parts of the state, our housing and shelter partner agencies, health departments, municipal officials, and the local and regional emergency points of contact as we work to keep those experiencing homelessness safe in shelters while also providing housing and services to as many people as we can to house them quickly
Our Journey Home staff, along with all of our partner agencies, are busy working to ensure that those who are experiencing homelessness in our community are being cared for during this unprecedented time in our world. Like many of you, we are working remotely and have had to suspend some of our essential programming like our A Hand Up program and the Career Pathways program as we are working to keep our staff and volunteers safe. Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Director of Development and Communications, Sara Salomons Wilson, with any questions or if you are interested in finding out how you can help. Sara can be reached at sara.salomons@journeyhomect.org.
Sincerely,
Matt and the entire Journey Home team