Catholic Charities Fort Worth adjusts expectations, but not mission, amid coronavirus
A group of volunteers, half wearing masks and gloves, cheerily unloaded food and toiletries from cars despite the cold and rain Saturday morning outside the Catholic Charities of Fort Worth donation center.
Like dozens of nonprofits across the county, Catholic Charities here has been turning to the community for help meeting basic needs for an onslaught of new clients.
President and CEO Michael Grace said Catholic Charities is planning for a minimum of 7,000 new requests for help, in addition to its ongoing caseload.
And that’s a conservative estimate.
Those 7,000-plus requests represent real people whose jobs have suddenly disappeared; whose incomes have dried up.
People need help feeding their families; paying the rent; figuring out how to educate their children, and in many cases themselves, in the brave new world of full-time distance learning; and navigating the sometimes novel and always confusing world of government assistance.
When policymakers and pundits lament the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on “the economy,” my assumption is that this is what they mean.
The good news is that helping people overcome desperate economic situations is territory that Catholic Charities knows well.
It’s been in the business of fighting poverty for decades, and while not chiefly a relief organization, in a lot of ways, the group is in its element during a crisis.
Perhaps that’s why its workers haven’t struggled to transition to a primarily work-from-home environment.
“This event has been the ultimate equalizer,” Grace said of the pandemic’s effect on charitable organizations’ ability to serve their clientele. “We have the same issues as other companies; we just have the additional mission of serving the community.”
Still, Catholic Charities has managed to make the transition remarkably well, using phone and video calls to connect with clients and even activating old phones as hotspots for participants in their Stay the Course community college initiative, so students without Internet access can continue classwork online.
“The bigger issue is where we’re needed and how can we deploy our resources where they are needed and not duplicated,” Grace said.
To that end, they’ve been working closely with community partners on providing emergency-level services, such as the distribution of food and hygiene supplies.
But they’ve had to make some adjustments to their current assistance model, as well as their expectations for what can be reasonably be achieved during a crisis that debilitates so many families at once.
In recent years, Catholic Charities’ work has become deep instead of broad, since helping people to get out of poverty and stay out of it means tackling challenges in multiple areas of life. It often takes years.
Their comprehensive case management services offer constant support to clients until they achieve economic independence.
Among other measures, Catholic Charities calls success getting someone off government assistance and securing a living wage.
They have had great success in helping many clients achieve these goals.
But in the current economic climate, not accepting government aid or turning down a temporary minimum-wage job is not in the client’s best interest.
Grace says they’re being flexible with criteria about what success looks like. Just how long they will need to adjust that criteria is the big unknown.
Still, as Grace points out, “the folks who have been working with us for years are better positioned to weather the storm.”
That’s great news at a time when we really need some.
And evidence, Grace explained, of how the current crisis clearly “emphasizes the need of achieving what we’re after.”
Helping people be more than one paycheck — or a global pandemic — away from poverty.
To support Catholic Charities Fort Worth’s fight against the impact of COVID-19 on the community, please go to www.catholiccharitiesfortworth.org.
