CHOC is on the Move
March 21, 2008 – 11:08 pm
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Winter is officially over as yesterday was the first day of spring (never mind that snow is in the forecast). Winter brought a lot of changes and transformation is still taking place. We are now working on plans to improve the building once again. We are planning on adding a warming kitchen and serving 3 meals a day, adding a sprinkler system to the day center, adding doors to the cubicles, and adding acoustical panels to reduce the noise. Friend’s Central High School has adopted a project at the CHOC and had their first fundraiser on March 18th. Students made and sold Smores to fellow students and teachers and in May they will be hosting a car wash.
RHD added a new program to it’s Montgomery County services that will have a positive effect on the CHOC and will help to address homelessness county wide. The new program, Critical Time Intervention (CTI), is a 9 month case management service that assists homeless folks to transition from an institution to the community. In addition to working with folks from the CHOC the new team will also work with folks transitioning from prison. We are happy that they are here.
Though the winter did not give us much snow, it did give us a lot of cold days and many code blues. This means that people were stuck inside much of the winter with cabin fever. We are very thankful to Valley View Community Church and New Millenium Church for helping to raise everybody’s spirits. On March 1st they hosted a spa day and party. Valley View helped organize several hairdressers and about 40 of our residents had make overs. Another 15 or 20 had manicures and several made jewelry. They also sent a DJ and everyone enjoyed dancing and playing “Name that TV theme song “. New Millenium brought in dinner for everyone and one of their church members performed as a mime. The entire day was a whole lot of fun and much needed.
We had our first meeting of the newly formed CHOC advisory board made up of both county employees and service providers. This group will be meeting monthly to help us improve services and enhance the lives of those we serve. Since becoming part of RHD in July we have spent a lot of time on improving the building. We are now focused on developing staff and improving the program and services.
Finally, we would like to thank Cabrini College. We have a great volunteer that comes faithfully each Monday and is helping to organize our data and we have several students helping us to complete client satisfaction surveys. These surveys are a required part of our funding but more importantly they give our clients the opportunity to tell us how we are doing and where we need to improve.
Keywords: , CHOC, CTI, Friend's Central High School, New Millenium Church, smores, spring, Valley View Community Church
