PathForward, a local nonprofit that serves the homeless, will gather Arlington residents, donors and supporters to celebrate and fundraise for its mobile medical outreach program next week.
The “No Place Like Home” celebration will take place on Thursday, April 11 at the Army Navy Country Club (1700 Army Navy Drive) near Arlington Ridge from 6:30-9 p.m. It is set to be hosted by local media personality Tommy McFly and will feature a live auction.
Those who want to attend can purchase tickets and or sponsorships on the website.
The festivities will benefit the expansion of the nonprofit’s Mobile Medical Program. After receiving a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to further their housing initiatives, this program, which originated during the pandemic, aims to bring medical care and support to unsheltered clients. It’s described as “backpack medicine” because health providers go to the clients wherever they are.
“We go to them and just simply start trying to build the trust to get them to consider letting us help them,” said Liz Nohra, Director of Strategic Partnerships at PathForward. “We’re going to care for their physical being, mental health and their stability.”
Nohra told ARLnow that in order to service the unsheltered, they need to build trust with them and they can only do that if they have the resources to routinely go out and help them. The outreach program currently has one registered nurse along with a few others who tend to the “medically vulnerable,” but that isn’t enough.
“Our outreach team and our nurse goes out at 4 a.m. to find whether they are in their encampments, in the woods or under a bridge,” said Nohra. “She can’t go often but she’ll go out to check on them.”
The funds raised at the event next week will go towards expanding the outreach teams.
“We want to create two mobile medical teams almost like dream teams and each team would be comprised of a registered nurse, licensed clinical social worker and a case manager,” said Nohra.
She said that with more people and resources they would be able to routinely check up unsheltered clients, build that trust and help them move forward to the housing portion of PathForward’s services.
The objective is to provide unsheltered individuals with “wrap around services,” meaning that the help they’d provide would be for their physical and mental well-being and their stability in society. The help doesn’t stop after they receive medical treatment or after they are placed in housing.
“Giving someone the key to their apartment is not the end, that is only the beginning,” said Nohra. “If you just hand somebody the keys to an apartment and say ‘okay, good luck to you’ their success is not guaranteed.”