Mercy Home adapts to keep its young people safe during COVID-19

As COVID-19 started to spread throughout the country, Mercy Home for Boys and Girls received word from a friend at the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention who said they should either close their homes or go into quarantine and expect to possibly get the virus.

Mercy Home, which was founded in 1887 to provide safe home environments and support for young people, moved quickly to keep the children and teens in its programs safe.

“We found a safe home for as many of our young people in residential care as possible — aunt, uncle, grandmother, maybe their own home from where they came,” said Father Scott Donahue, president and CEO. “We had to make sure it was going to be a safe place and they were going to be cared for without knowing for how long, because none of us know.”

It closed its Walsh girls’ campus for the first time ever, and moved girls who couldn’t be placed in a safe home environment to the main West Loop campus, but in a separate area from the boys.

While most staff members are working from home during the pandemic, Mercy Home created cohorts of workers in various areas such as youth programs and facilities who live at Mercy Home 24 hours a day for one or two weeks, and then a new cohort comes in.

“That way we’re pretty much able to keep the environment sterile and clean,” Donahue said. “We’ve had no cases of coronavirus thus far, thank God.”

The agency also started a Compassionate Care Task Force that provides material support and resources to the young people and their guardians living off campus.

Mercy Home cares for 1,000 young people and families through its residential, after care and Friends First programs. Fewer than 20 were living on campus as of press time.

“This Compassionate Care program is extended to all of that continuum,” Donahue said.

The agency has been soliciting donations of food and supplies, which they collect and put into care packages. Then staff deliver the packages to the homes of families around the city. All young people are still receiving support from their therapists and caseworkers using telehealth tools.

“These kids are kids who’ve come from some rough stuff,” Donahue said. “They, too, are in new environments with new caretakers, so we provide both the youth with this ongoing education and therapy and we are working with those who are caring for them. I’m really proud of how we’ve been able to pivot and it’s gone extraordinarily well.”

Donohue lives on campus as well, but because he’s over 65 he has isolated himself from the youth in residential care.

“I wave through windows,” he said.

Patrick Needham is Mercy Home’s director of planning and evaluation and is overseeing the Compassionate Care Task Force.

“We have a great team that’s working on this,” Needham said. “We have food donations that people are making and we’re able to purchase food from monetary donations people made.”

Families keep in touch with their case workers, who share requests for items like extra groceries with the task force. Mercy Home is also helping with specific needs such as internet bills for families who can’t afford it.

“We have 130 families we’ve given some support to since this all began,” Needham said.

Tom, Gilardi, vice president of youth programs, lives on the West Loop campus in an apartment with his family and the agency’s working facility dog, Pongo. Now he’s also part of the cohort staying on campus during the isolation.

Gilardi said he sees some silver linings in this challenging time.

“This situation has regrounded me in the importance of basic things like making sure kids are getting good sleep, that they’re getting good food and getting exercise and then doing those really well,” he said.

Another positive is that the young people living on campus are getting more one-on-one attention with staff than they might receive during normal times when all of the youth are there.

“Overall, I think the kids’ morale has been surprisingly good,” Gilardi said. “There are some moments when they are like ‘What the heck?’”

Another sign of hope during this time is that in some cases where the children and teens are back with their guardians, the family dynamics are improving.

“We’ve had some situations where the kid has been here, whether it’s a year or two years or six months or whatever, and now he’s back home and he’s getting this tele-support and things are going good,” Gilardi said. “The beauty of this is that it really might birth — even for a short time, like a pilot — a new modality to support families that isn’t necessarily residential, or maybe it’s a shorter-term residential program, with pretty significant family support.”