Debra Messing teams up with Care for the Homeless to help homeless families


Care for the Homeless teamed up with actress Debra Messing, Curél®  skincare and Direct Relief to provide 500 personal care packs filled with basic hygiene supplies and skincare products to help homeless families in need at our health fair Tuesday in East Harlem.

Award-winning actress Debra Messing delivers care packages to homeless 
families at a Care for the Homeless Health Fair in Harlem.
Debra Messing visits distributes care packages to homeless families.
Curél® skincare sponsored the initiative to offer comfort to some of the most vulnerable women and children of New York City. Direct Relief, a generous supporter of Care for the Homeless since the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, helped launch our new Mobile Health Clinic, which allows us to deliver medical care to homeless people in need on a regular basis and also boosts our capacity to respond to future emergencies. 

The assistance comes at a critical time. "Homelessness is going down nationwide, but it's going up 40 percent in New York City," said Debra Messing.

The Care for the Homeless Health Fair featured fun activities,
like face painting.
“The homelessness crisis has hit NYC families especially hard. The numbers are staggering, with over 23,000 children sleeping in city shelters every night,” said Bobby Watts, Executive Director at Care for the Homeless. “Children experiencing homelessness are sick four times more often than other children. This donation comes at a critical time, helping us reach families most in need.”

Care for the Homeless is especially thankful for Ms. Messing's support and the generous sponsorship of Direct Relief and Curél® skincare. Since 2013, Direct Relief has invested over $100,000 in cash grants and donations of medicines and medical supplies to Care for the Homeless to advance our mission in NYC. 

Dozens of volunteers helped with the day's event. We especially want to thank Chubb Insurance and the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation and the NYU School of Nursing. More photos from the day appear below.


Watch Debra discuss the event on Fox News at the clip below (from 3:22 to 4:35).




More Photos from the Day:

Volunteers from Chubb Insurance assembling care packages.

Volunteers painting faces with families at the Health Fair.

Moms visit with Care for the Homeless Health Educators.

Volunteers from NYU Nursing School - a huge help during the event.



Popular posts from this blog

Join Us on Mon, June 22nd for 2nd Annual Summer Solstice Success Celebration!

Image
Join Care for the Homeless and our Client Leaders on Monday, June 22 nd at 4:30 p.m. in celebrating the health care successes of homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers. The 2 nd Annual CFH Summer Solstice Success Celebration will feature live entertainment, fun and the opportunity to recognize the successes of our clients and thank the providers who delivery high quality, client centered services every day. “So often people focus on the bad news coming out of the shelter system,” said David Broxton, a formerly homeless cancer survivor and Care for the Homeless client. “We want to put the focus on the successes of New Yorkers who have experienced homelessness - people do get back on their feet with the right services available to them.”   The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the dining room and gardens at Red Oak Apartments, 135 W. 106 th Street in Manhattan, on Monday, June 22, at 4:30 p.m. In addition to celebrating health care stories of success
Read more

CFH Executive Director Bobby Watts Responds to Police Homeless Photos on Pix11

Image
Care for the Homeless Executive Director Bobby Watts was featured last night on Pix11 news to talk about an initiative by the Sergeant Benevolent Association to photograph homeless New Yorkers on the street. The officers are posting their pictures to an online Flicker photo album in an attempt to expose a supposed “decrease in quality of life in NYC” but what these pictures really highlight are the difficulties of life on the street. Whatever the politics of the initiative, we know that it’s crucial to find real fixes for the problems of people experiencing homelessness.  “I don’t take a position on the letter or motivation. I really focus on results,” Bobby Watts, executive director of Care for the Homeless, told PIX11 News. “To the extent that more people are aware of homelessness and are determined to find solutions, that can be helpful.” If you see someone in need of services on the street, call 3-1-1 to alert city homeless outreach teams. Click here to watch the full
Read more

Provider Profile Vol. 5 | Dr. Andrea Littleton

Image
Addressing the Whole Person Dr. Littleton with a Patient The streets outside the Care For the Homeless (CFH) Health Center (located at the Living Room/Safe Haven Shelter) rattle with a rhythm that should be familiar to most New Yorkers. Semi-trucks blow by, footsteps patter on the sidewalk, and the nearest park teems with laughing children. Across the street, a Dominican monastery stands as tall and proud as the day it was built in 1891, adding a touch of history to the area. Conversely, the rhythm inside the halls of the shelter and health center are anything but familiar. Located in the Bronx, the Living Room/Safe Haven a is a 24-hour, open access drop-in site, meaning anyone experiencing street homelessness is welcome to come in and spend time off the streets. CFH site partner BronxWorks offers hot meals, showers, laundry, and housing services to compliment the medical services provided by CFH. Despite the similarities it shares with other CFH sites, the Living Ro
Read more

Sophie Cares for the Homeless

Image
This young lady couldn’t stop giggling during her health check-up by Sophie As a Nurse Practitioner, Sophie cares for homeless individuals in New York City in her own special way. She started working at Care for the Homeless only two months after graduating from Yale University with her Master’s Degree in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner. Sophie is originally from Portland, Oregon. She received her bachelor’s from Occidental College in Los Angeles, California in 2013 and moved to New York City in 2014 when she started her studies at Yale. Sophie says her mentors at Yale referred her to Care for the Homeless (CFH), where she now practices medicine at two CFH health centers, one in Queens and the other in the Bronx. She enjoys working at CFH because she is always “learning from [her] patients.” She says coming from Oregon to living in New York and working at CFH, she learned a lot about the challenges the city brings and the “incredible resilience” that is needed to live i
Read more

Reducing Eligibility to Life Saving Services

Image
The current administration has continuously targeted federal benefit programs important to low-income Americans for drastic cuts. A new effort follows suit by proposing a change to how the ‘poverty threshold’ is to be calculated, which will decrease the number of people eligible for important federal benefit programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. This would affect millions of extremely low-income individuals and families. The current measurement called the “consumer price index (CPI)” has been used for a long time to set the annualized increases in the official poverty threshold. The administration is considering using what is known as “the chained CPI”, a different inflation measure that would result in a slower annual increase of inflation over time. “Chained CPI” assumes that as the prices of goods go up, individuals substitute less expensive items, thereby reducing their overall expenses. Why is this important? The proposed change wou
Read more