Meeting Them Where They’re At: Working with families in recovery and experiencing homelessness
Jennifer Pack, LFMT, Hamilton Families | Transitional Housing Behavioral Health Clinician, January 24, 2022 / Photo: Allie Deck-Shipley
Hamilton Families’ Jennifer Pack, LFMT, shares her work with families experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders in our transitional housing program.
Jennifer Pack is soft spoken, quick to share but precise with her words, and obviously a brilliant mind. She began working with families when she was in grad school, studying marriage and family therapy, art therapy, even writing her master’s thesis on decreasing the stigma towards substance use disorders. She didn’t waste any time putting her ideas into action when she started working for a residential addiction recovery program for women called Epiphany Center, just a few blocks down from Hamilton Families | Transitional Housing. It’s there where she attended meetings with the family treatment court, and where we implored her to join us as our Behavioral Health Clinician.
I first learned of Jennifer’s work while I was filling in for an overnight shift at our transitional housing program, walking the halls, and seeing a new name on one of the office doors. I sat down with Jennifer to find out what exactly she does to support families experiencing homelessness at Hamilton Families | Transitional Housing.
Cory Winter: Let’s dive right in, you had mentioned that you regularly host support meetings with families residing in our transitional housing program. What are those exactly?
Jennifer Pack, LFMT: I meet with a lot of people in recovery for individual sessions; in the summer and fall of 2020, there were so many families expressing challenges around not being able to go to the in-person meetings. A big source of support for people in recovery is found through community and meeting new people, and these meetings are an opportunity to do that; it’s a real fellowship.
The families in our transitional housing program are a close-knit group; that’s one of the benefits of having families residing onsite, they’re there to support one another. Anyone who is in recovery can attend one of our meetings, and I honestly mean that when I say they are our meetings because I share the responsibility of organizing them with the families themselves. The parents and guardians — mostly women — who attend the meetings take an active part in inviting the more hesitant people to join them and ask if they want to go; it’s really encouraging.
I’m currently working consistently with nine families and five families on an as-needed basis. The recovery meetings have been going strong every week since November 2020 and the families in recovery really take it upon themselves to be an active part of the process; they bring coffee and snacks to the meetings, and it’s been a nice way to have some form of community right now during the pandemic.
Cory: So, it’s a peer-organized meeting with you serving as more of the facilitator, the supporter keeping their recovery efforts together?
Jennifer: Yeah! A few times I’ve been out of town, and they hosted one while I was gone. Once the group cohesion seems to be going well, I’ll introduce the meeting with a check-in and close it with a check-out but those attending generally feel comfortable enough to take on the running of the meetings now.
Cory: Can you tell me what kind of issues they discuss at the recovery meetings?
Jennifer: There’s this meditation literature called “Just for Today” in which the meeting attendees will read a passage and talk about how that reading relates to them and their recovery. They’ll also discuss triggers, ways to help others out, their relationships, ways to maintain sobriety, isolation, recovery successes and challenges; it’s different every week. What’s helped a great deal is that childcare is provided which is incredibly helpful in allowing attendees to focus and dive deep into what’s on their mind.
It’s astounding to me that all the meeting attendees got sober during the pandemic. Would that have been possible without this support group? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly been an integral part in their recovery to have a community where they can actively engage with one another. It’s reassuring to me to that if they’re able to recover amid a pandemic, then they’ll be even better equipped in the long-term.
Cory: I think you might be selling yourself short in terms of your role and just how vital your influence has been in the attendees’ recovery process. What do you think makes the experience of homelessness such an exacerbator of substance use?
Jennifer: Substance use numbs the depression, anxiety, and negative feelings that most, if not all, families face while experiencing homelessness; it quite literally makes it “feel” easier to cope with the challenges of experiencing homelessness if you’re not sober. So, it’s just a tool for people to get through the day or the night without having to feel the elements, the stress, or their own emotions.
Cory: Granted substance use isn’t unique to parents of families experiencing homelessness, but there does seem to be a harsher narrative and a wider empathy gap with public opinion as soon as you associate the condition of substance use with the experience of homelessness.
Jennifer: Indeed, not only does substance use affect people differently, but when you add socio-economic status into the equation, well it’s far easier to “get away with” using substances when you have a consistent income and stable housing. Whereas with the families I work with have lost housing due to substance use disorders but they’re not making $200,000+ a year; they’re low-income, struggling to make ends meet, and more often than not have experienced some form of trauma. So why would the public vilify them for that? We aim to meet families where they are — with no judgment — and help them get to where they want to be through empathy and understanding, using every success and challenge as a learning experience.
Cory: And then there’s this added layer of one’s substance use forcing them to repeat their lapses into homelessness repeatedly, that to break the cycle of homelessness, housing needs to be provided first for their substance use disorder to be resolved. Do you find that to be true?
Jennifer: Definitely! At Hamilton Families, we take a “Housing First” approach and then take on everything else that is impacting a family’s ability to stabilize. Families need a place to live first, it’s the foundation and nothing can be accomplished without it. What’s unreal is that there are so many programs that will require you to be sober first and then they’ll help you, but the fact of the matter is that to maintain your sobriety, you first need a safe and stable home. Child Protective Services, for example, will often say that they won’t reunify a parent with their child until they have stable housing, but they have these stable housing options for you that you can’t have access to until you’re reunified with your child. See the how cycle of homelessness is built into the system?
Cory: I feel what you’re also witnessing is the impact of homelessness on children and the chronic effects it has on them for the rest of their lives unless it’s ended at an early age. It’s generational, isn’t it?
Jennifer: Right! There have been many families that I work with at our transitional housing program, and they’ve been experiencing some form of homelessness their whole life. The issue is that if you’ve become accustomed to a certain way of life, it’s extremely difficult to feel comfortable or safe while experiencing any other way of life; when you’ve been displaced your entire life, you’re used to trusting you and you alone.
There’s a specific person I keep thinking about while we’ve been talking about this; I started working with her at my old position into my new position, so I’ve been able to see her progress over the last three to four years, seeing how much she’s grown. I won’t mention her name or identity but she’s someone who has been experiencing homelessness and a substance use disorder since she was age 12 and she’s now in her late thirties. She’s come so far and has dealt with all the challenges we mentioned previously, and it’s taken her over 20 years to finally stabilize. It takes time and trust for people to change their lives.
Cory: How do you go about developing that trust?
Jennifer: It’s not easy. I was working with one participant who kept reaching out to seek my support but every time I tried to get in contact with her, she wouldn’t answer, but I was relentless and kept at it. What you need to understand is that this process doesn’t happen overnight. You need to be empathetic, you need to provide encouragement and consistency, and you need to acknowledge them. I think just meeting them where they’re at and not forcing anything on them is key.
Cory: I feel like the long-term trust building you undergo with families is why the transitional housing model is so successful. I know of families who are still contacting their former case managers a decade later to seek their advice, support, or just to know that there is a social safety net that exists if they should ever need it. It’s that kind of support that breeds confidence in families to be resourceful and…
Jennifer: …to advocate for themselves, exactly! I think what we really excel at is helping to teach families how to advocate for themselves. All the staff working at our transitional housing program have an unconditional positive regard for the families we serve. Families can yell at us, they can scream at us, but we are still going to be there and work with them, showing them that they can do everything we’re asking of them to succeed in their stability journey, and we’ll always be there for them if they need our support.
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Jennifer Pack, LFMT, is the Behavioral Health Clinician for Hamilton Families | Transitional Housing which operates two programs that provide temporary housing and supportive services to families experiencing homelessness. Visit hamiltonfamilies.org/transitional-housing.
Cory Winter, M.Sc., M.P.A., is the Communications Manager for Hamilton Families, San Francisco’s leading service provider to families experiencing homelessness. To help end family homelessness, visit hamiltonfamilies.org.