TAKE FIVE!

February 16, 2021

Jenny Sanchez:
Hello, I’m Jenny Sanchez. Welcome to Sullivan 180 Presents Take Five!. Our guest today is Shannon Kelly from Catholic Charities of Orange, Sullivan and Ulster. Shannon, thank you for joining me.

Shannon Kelly:
Thanks for having me, Jenny. I’m excited.

Jenny Sanchez:
It’s our pleasure. What kind of programs and services do you offer?

Shannon Kelly:
Sure, so we have our social safety net services, which I think is what people think of when they think of Catholic charities, right? People come to us for food. They come to us for financial assistance, with things like rent or heat and electric or fuel bills or transportation or medication, right. And we can assist financially. We can also help them navigate those systems to get help that they qualify for elsewhere. We have an immigration legal services team, so we have migration counselors and attorneys who help folks on all stages of their path towards citizenship. But our agency, the majority of what we do is really to help folks who are dealing with substance use disorder. We take a holistic person-centered approach and our Monticello campuses, a pretty good example of that because on our Monticello campus, you can find all levels of care for someone who’s struggling with drugs and alcohol. We have a crisis service unit, which is for folks who are in detox and experiencing, you know, those early symptoms of withdrawal. We have residential treatment for both men and women that stay with us for varying periods of time, but can receive access to daily treatment services. And then we have two sort of tracks in our outpatient programs, right. We have a day rehabilitation program. That’s an intensive five day a week program. And then we have the outpatient clinic where people from the community can come to us and they can get access to individual counseling group counseling, family therapy. And I should mention that all of our clients and all of those levels of care have access to medication assisted treatment from our doctors and nurse practitioners.

Jenny Sanchez:
Okay, great. And how has your programming change due to COVID-19

Shannon Kelly:
COVID-19 has really changed a lot of different things. I mean, I think when it first hit last March, our initial concern was really the safety and health of our staff and of the people in our residential care who live with us. Right. For outpatient, one of the biggest changes has been a transition to telehealth for the majority of our services. Right. Telehealth allows us to continue to some extent that person-centered approach that we like to take. So we have video call options where folks engage in therapy, similar to what you and I are doing. Right. But we also have currently telephonic options for people who don’t have access, we also have some in-person services still available. You know, it really depends on the person where they’re at how we can best treat their issues with chemical dependency. And so requests for food. We’ve always had sort of a small food closet on our Monticello campus where we would help people as they came in. But during 2020, you know, we had to stock it more frequently. I think we’ve distributed somewhere near 3000 meals. And some of that is people coming to our campus to get the food. But some of it is us doing home delivery to people who are quarantined or isolated and can’t leave, they call us, we send the food out to them and then we’ve held a couple of pop-up pantries. That’s what we’re calling them, where we sort of have a lot of food available in an outside venue. We did one in Monticello and one in Ferndale.

Jenny Sanchez:
What can County residents do to help your organization?

Shannon Kelly:
I think the biggest thing they can do is help us spread the word to those in need. Right? We want our services to reach everyone in Sullivan County that might need them. And particularly right now, when County residents see their friends, families, neighbors, dealing with isolation, dealing with depression, maybe self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to sort of manage all of that. All of what’s been going on for all of us the last 10 months or so, the best thing they can do is find out about us and share information about us and then encourage, encourage those in their family and those in their social circles to reach out to us for help so that we can be there. I think that’s the most important thing. The other thing I would say is that I mentioned the pop-up pantries that we did last year. We are really planning to ramp that up a bit in 2021 and have, many more in various parts of Sullivan County. We’re going to partner with the food bank for the Hudson Valley on that. And so we will be in need of volunteers. So stay tuned for the exact dates and locations, but we are going to need volunteers in addition to our staff

Jenny Sanchez:
To help out how can people stay in touch with Catholic Charities?

Shannon Kelly:
Okay. So we have our website, which is www.cccsos.org. We try to keep that updated with sort of different events, but a lot of folks follow us on social media. We are on Facebook Catholic charities of Orange Sullivan Ulster. We are on Twitter at cath char OSU at cath char OSU is our Twitter handle. And then I would really want to mention that folks in need or anybody who wants to email us the entire agency, we have a help line that’s via email. So C C O S U helpline@cccsos.org.

Jenny Sanchez:
Good. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Shannon Kelly:
No, I don’t think so. Just thank you for finding ways like this, to keep the community informed about what’s going on. You know, we can’t have big events. We don’t know how effective flyering is, right, but using, you know, venues like this to talk about what we do and to keep people as healthy and as safe as we can, I think is really important. So thanks for doing that.

Jenny Sanchez:
Our pleasure, Shannon, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your great programs with us.