The Father Alfred Center is St. Anthony’s free residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.  Last Thursday, the residents and staff of Fr. Alfred Center allowed me to come to their house meeting to speak about AB 828 (The Nutritional Assistance for Families Act).  This legislation is sponsored by Oakland Assembly Member Sandre’ Swanson and is supported by anti-hunger organizations and advocates from across California.

Through this bill, California would “opt out” of the lifetime federal ban on CalFresh (the new name for California’s food stamp program) for people with prior low-level drug convictions.  Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have already restored nutrition benefits to this vulnerable population.

I used my visit to the Fr. Alfred Center house meeting as an opportunity to tell the program participants about AB 828.  I told them that AB 828 is going to be heard by the Assembly Human Services Committee on Tuesday April 5, and the bill needs support from the community in order to make it through the legislative process.  Today, I received the most wonderful gift that the St. Anthony’s Advocacy Coordinator could ever get: an interoffice envelope filled with hand-written support letters for AB 828 from our Fr. Alfred Center participants!

Next Tuesday, April 5, 2011, I will travel to Sacramento with four of our Fr. Alfred Center participants to tell the Assembly Human Services Committee that we support AB 828.  While we’re there, we’ll hand-deliver all of the AB 828 support letters that we’ve received.

If you’d like to lend your voice of support for AB 828 and for the other anti-hunger bills being heard by the Assembly Human Services Committee on April 5, please visit our advocacy alert page, where we have an easy to use customizable letter that can be automatically emailed to the members of the committee. (more…)

Although the “Great Recession” technically ended in 2009, hunger and food insecurity continue to be a problem for many Americans.   For the past 60 years, the trends we’ve seen at St. Anthony’s Dining Room have mirrored nationwide struggles with hunger.  

When we look at the number of meals we’ve served between February 15 - March 1 of 2011, we see a 15% increase over the in the number of meals we served over the same period one year ago.   What we see at St. Anthony’s isn’t a phenomenon specific to San Francisco or to the Tenderloin: hunger continues to be a problem in communities across the nation.   Recent  reports from the Food Research and Action Center and Feeding America show that large numbers of households across the country are having trouble affording enough food. 

An article in the March 28, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle explains more about the specific issues that are related to hunger in California.  One of the factors related to hunger in our state is the burdensome and unnecessary barriers to the federal Food Stamp program (named “Cal Fresh” in California) that are  in place in California.  Only 50% of the people who are eligible for Cal Fresh actually participate in the program, and burdensome administrative requirements like mandatory finger imaging and quarterly reporting requirements contribute to California’s low participation rate.

St. Anthony’s is working with anti-hunger groups from across the state to cut through the red tape and improve California’s Cal Fresh participation rate, and you can join us!   We’ll be bringing a busload of advocates to Sacramento for Hunger Action Day on Tuesday May 17, 2011.  We’ll talk to our legislators about hunger issues in our communities and legislation that can help reduce hunger statewide.  If you’re interested in participating, please email Colleen at crivecca@stanthonysf.org

Thank you Stone and Youngberg who were in last week to volunteer. The Pantry makeover project was a great success and will help our clients access healthy and nutritious food. Well done!

In case you did not get a chance to see it, check out the article published in today’s SF Chronicle and SF Gate announcing the green light from the San Francisco Planning Commission to move forward with our 121 building in partnership with Mercy Housing.

This past Thursday, volunteers from Stone & Youngberg came to the Tenderloin Tech Lab to help out clients with some basic as well as advanced computer functions. The volunteers were also there to give advice to clients who were actively seeking employment – giving pointers on interviewing techniques, networking, and advancing the careers of those individuals already employed. All said and done there were about 20 clients who were there for assistance pair with 10 volunteers. A great turnout for a great event!

What does it mean to be a companion? What behaviors, practices, and actions are involved? And who is most in need of our companionship?

These were some of the questions that surfaced and that were given important answers at a training on March 16th for St. Anthony’s staff. The training was led by Craig Rennebohm, a pastor in the United Church of Christ and founder of the Seattle Mental Health Chaplaincy. The session helped us think about ways to better understand and serve our guests.

It’s our task as staff to meet guests where they are, even when a guest’s situation and outlook on the world might be difficult to relate to. It’s our responsibility to exercise all of our imaginative capacities to try to understand what life is like for our guests, and to strive to interact with them not as authority figures, caretakers or service-givers, but as partners with them on their individual journeys—as companions.

We all learned to think about the word ‘companion’ as a verb. To companion another person is to act in a certain way to build a relationship with them. Rennebohm highlighted key components of companioning: Hospitality (creating a safe space in which to interact with a person, being welcoming and treating a person with dignity and respect), Neighboring (introducing ourselves as equals that share a common ground), “Sharing the journey side by side” (looking out at the world from the same place, from the same perspective), Listening (hearing a person’s story, beginning with their present situation), and Accompaniment (offering support, “building a circle of care”).

We also discussed the way that companionship calls for acknowledging our limits: admitting when we might not understand something, or when we’re unable to help someone in a certain way. And we learned that companionship is necessarily a process, and becomes clearer, and easier, through a commitment to companion another person over an extended period of time.

To learn more visit: Pathways to Promise; Craig Rennebohm’s website: www.mentalhealthchaplain.org.

From left: Fr. Michael Blackburn, Fr. John, and Fr. Tom

On Saturday, March 5^th, Fr. John Hardin OFM and Fr. Tom West OFM celebrated the 25^th anniversary of their ordination as Franciscan priests. A mass in honor of them and Fr. Michael Blackburn OFM, who was also ordained 25 years ago, was held at St. Boniface, and was followed by a reception at the New Povorello Room at 150 Golden Gate across the street.

Fr. John was St. Anthony’s Executive Director from 2002-2009, and now is the Provincial of the St. Barbara Province of Franciscans and the chair of St. Anthony’s Board of Trustees. Fr. Tom West has been a chaplain at SAF for the last two years, but has ties to St. Anthony’s that extend back twenty years, when he and Fr. John lived with St. Anthony’s founder, Fr. Alfred Boeddeker, at St. Boniface Church, and served in the Dining Room.

Thanks are in order to Lou Giraudo and Boudin Bakery for catering the luncheon and the Dining Room volunteers for their support. If you see Fr. Tom or Fr. John around, be sure to congratulate them on 25 years of service!

Thanks to St. Ignatius for their Socks of Love clothing drive. Socks and underwear are some of the most difficult clothing items for us to obtain for our guests. We really appreciate all the work St. Ignatius does for us, with their volunteer groups and their sock drive. It makes a huge difference in the lives of our guests.

Mental health programs across the US are in crisis after many states severely reduced budget funding for mental health services yet again this year. In California alone, funding for mental health care as been cut by $587 million, or 16 percent, in the past 2 ½ years.

Often our clients struggle with mental illness which, as with physical illness, only becomes exacerbated due to lack of proper treatment. Our patients at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic already struggle to meet basic needs such as food and shelter – the suffering of poverty compounded by untreated mental illness is a nightmare many are forced to live with. Because of the fear, misunderstanding, and stigma associated with mental illness, these individuals find themselves targets for abuse on the street or arrest and imprisonment. It is difficult enough for a mentally capable individual juggling three low-income jobs to pay rent for a single room occupancy apartment here in the Tenderloin: for someone with untreated mental illness? Nearly impossible. By continuing to cut funding to necessary mental health programs, we are “abandoning [people], kicking them out of their homes, leaving them to go back to overcrowded prisons and back to the streets” – as one social worker put it in The Sacramento Bee.

Mental illness knows no social boundaries. It affects the rich and the poor. These cuts condemn those who rely on community mental health services to unjust pain and suffering simply because they lack the means to access the care they need to be well.

At St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic we believe in holistic care. We offer mental health therapy in-house and strive to incorporate positive mental well-being into all our patients’ lives. Our outpatient mental health program offers both individual and group therapy options in a variety of approaches to positively manage anger, depression, stress, and anxiety. We focus on a combination of cognitive therapy and meditation techniques to help patients overcome mood triggers and manage their own mental health. We’ve seen particular success in women from our Latina Support Group where women come once a week to discuss the hardships of isolation, culture shock, and recent immigration and learn simple meditation techniques they can use at home to alleviate stress. At St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic, we empower patients, providing them with the primary care they need to stay healthy and offering healthcare support in times when they are not, all free of charge.

Although four letter words associated with potty talk may be a common stereo type for the Tenderloin’s infamous streets, as of late, the subject of potty in its literal meaning has become the hot issue. Three articles in the month of February (Chronicle, Examiner and Central City Extra) brought citywide attention to the dire shortage of public restrooms available in the Tenderloin. As part of St. Anthony’s mission to provide comprehensive services to our most vulnerable citizens, we offer restrooms in both of our locations on Golden Gate Avenue that are open to the public beginning at 8am until we close our building at 4:30pm. And although we know at St. Anthony’s that this does not meet a round-the-clock need for restrooms, we don’t always have an easy answer to help resolve the problem.

Help us in advocating for the Tenderloin by clarifying that St. Anthony’s does offer restrooms to the public and by voicing your support for the need for more public restrooms by leaving a message in the comments section of this post. St. Anthony’s will make sure that all your comments go directly to city officials.