WeCare helps the homeless
Chronic homelessness is as hard to cure as chronic disease.
But WeCare Street Outreach aims to reduce both.
Every other Monday night, Dr. Monica Speicher and the WeCare volunteers tend to the bodies and souls of Washington’s unsheltered homeless.
We Care, launched in 2009 and affiliated with the Washington City Mission, provides routine medical care and medical supplies, food and clothing to the homeless.
“These are people who otherwise would not seek medical attention and they deserve to have their health needs taken care of,” said Speicher, a physician at Canonsburg Family Medicine of the Washington Health System. “Sometimes, all they need to know is that someone cares about them.”
The organization is modeled after Operation Safety Net, the nationally renowned, Pittsburgh-based program started by street care pioneer Dr. Jim Withers.
In WeCare’s early days, Speicher and the small group of volunteers and medical professionals, armed with bottled water, snack food, blankets and socks, trekked along the city’s streets, bridges, and railroad tracks and visited abandoned buildings and trailers looking for the homeless.
“We wanted to treat the homeless on their turf, on their terms, without strings attached,” said Speicher, who has traveled the world providing medical care to underserved populations.
Over its first six months, WeCare volunteers worked to earn the trust of the homeless, who worry about being robbed, taken advantage of, or kicked out of their makeshift homes.
These days, WeCare tends to the city’s homeless at Jefferson Avenue United Methodist Church, called the “Spaghetti Church,” where the street population gathers for a hot meal,
medical attention and fellowship.
On a recent night, homeless men and women ate pizza and drank coffee while Speicher checked blood pressure, listened to patients’ lungs and distributed packets of aspirin. Speicher thought she would treat more acute health problems, but the most common ailments are chronic high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes.
Speicher hugged a homeless man and asked, “Are you behaving yourself? I hear you found a doctor.”
He pulled an insurance card from his wallet and showed her, and Speicher laughed.
“You’re going to our practice,” she said.
“See, I knew I picked a winner,” the man joked.
WeCare also runs a clinic at the City Mission, where Speicher and medical students from Washington Health System treat homeless men and women who need followup care.
One of WeCare’s most significant contributions is its efforts to get the homeless off the streets and into rehabilitation programs and permanent housing.
“Sometimes, it’s a matter of building trust with them so that they’ll accept help,” said Speicher, noting many of the chronic homeless battle drug and alcohol addiction and mental illess.
Every year WeCare throws a Christmas party, where volunteers hand out gifts and share Christmas dinner. One WeCare volunteer made a San Franciso 49ers blanket for a homeless woman who loves the football team.
“I love WeCare. It’s really helped me out a lot,” said Sam Carpenter, who has been homeless for years. “It’s hard to find caring people out there today. We’re like family here.”
WeCare also serves another purpose: to reduce emergency room costs at local hospitals, where the homeless – often uninsured – go for medical care.
“I have a personal goal to keep people healthy enough so that they’re not utilizing hospital health care services as much,” said Speicher.
“The homeless often ignore medical problems until they’ve gotten too bad to ignore any longer. They have bigger health care bills, longer hospitalizations, and they have more acute and more severe health issues because their problems have compounded to the point where they’re quite sick and they actually need to be admitted.”
WeCare’s ultimate aim, said Speicher, is to be “rendered unnecessary.”
“We’ve definitely gotten close to these guys,” said Speicher, “but I think everyone in WeCare would love it if there wasn’t any need for us anymore.”