Shelter is a human right and emergency shelters are a vital part of the public health infrastructure. When designed and operated using both preventive medicine and social work best practices, emergency shelters are uniquely situated to promote the health and wellness of individuals accessing services as well as the surrounding community.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that emergency shelters play a critically important role in a community’s public health and need to be smaller, wide open, ensure a welcoming and calm environment, and be staffed by social work professionals.
Opened in October 2022, Elena’s Way is a new, best practice 24/7 Wellness Shelter, like the highly successful shelter operated by Preble Street at the University of Southern Maine Sullivan Gym in summer 2020. The Elena’s Way Wellness Shelter is located at 5 Portland Street.
Informed by a response to the COVID-19 emergency, Elena’s Way is an ongoing part of the solution to homelessness and provides warmth, safety, and intensive services to up to 40 people of all genders experiencing homelessness and complex physical and behavioral health needs, who cannot access any other shelter.
A Wellness Shelter is a 24-hour, service-inclusive, and trauma-informed emergency shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness that is grounded in social work and medical best practices. A Wellness Shelter provides a therapeutic environment for those accessing services to heal, rest, and stabilize as they connect with trained social work staff to pursue casework goals related to housing, healthcare, employment, and community integration.
A Healing Environment: Through shelter design and operational policies and procedures, a Wellness Shelter aims to create a healthy, therapeutic, and trauma-informed environment. In addition to yielding improved casework outcomes for those that access services, research has shown that the behaviors of mental health and substance use disorders can be reduced or eliminated in an environment that is healing and restorative.
Personal Space: Created in consultation with medical experts, the layout, design, and operational workflows of a Wellness Shelter maximize personal space. High ceilings and general spaciousness provide a sense of calm and quiet that is atypical of traditional shelter settings. Social distancing is incorporated into all aspects of shelter design and beds are at least six feet apart. This space not only mitigates the spread of contagious diseases, like COVID-19, but also positively impacts emotional health.
Comprehensive Services: Professional casework, meals, laundry, storage, and mail are all offered on-site, maximizing the ability of those accessing services to stay within the program and reducing the need for unnecessary trips to-and-from the shelter to meet basic needs. This is not only beneficial from a preventative medicine standpoint, but also promotes opportunities for rest and healing among a population that is significantly more prone to physical and mental health conditions. Collaborations with mental health, substance use, and medical providers are actively pursued, and these caregivers are welcomed into the shelter setting and invited to “meet people where they’re at.”
Empowerment: A Wellness Shelter promotes individual agency, offering opportunities for choices that empower those accessing services to be the decision-makers about how to best meet their needs. Unlike traditional shelter environments, a Wellness Shelter provides access to beds at all hours of the day, allowing individuals to rest whenever needed. Similarly, nutritious food is always available, promoting choice and minimizing the need for lines or crowding. These operational plans are created intentionally to negate the common theme within homeless services where those who access resources are forced to compete for limited supplies.
Professional Social Work Staff: All shelter staff are trained in social work assessment and use established social work best practices in their approaches, interactions, and interventions. The principles of harm reduction, client-centered care, and strengths-based social work are essential tools for staff and critical to establishing the trauma-informed and therapeutic environment distinctive of a Wellness Shelter. This helps to mitigate behavioral issues related to mental health and substance use disorders and allows individuals who may not access or succeed in traditional shelter environments to achieve stability in a Wellness Shelter setting.
Who is Elena?
Many Preble Street buildings or rooms are named after people who are activists or social workers or are significant in the history of the agency and Elena’s Way is named for Elena Schmidt. Without Elena, Preble Street would not be the organization we are today. Her wisdom, heart, and values-based skills helped Preble Street grow and expand our services. In her nearly 20 years here, she has served as the first Development Director, the first Human Resources Director, and now as Archivist and Leadership Advisor. Elena has helped build this agency through her fundraising efforts, commitment to our mission, and tireless devotion to helping people who need it most. She embodies so much of what Preble Street is today.
Keep reading
Two years of impact at the Elena’s Way Wellness Shelter
October 2024 marks two years of service to vulnerable community members experiencing unsheltered homelessness at the Elena’s Way Wellness Shelter. Since opening its doors, Elena’s Way has provided over 18,000 bed nights to individuals experiencing homelessness. That represents more than 18,000 times that a person has been able to sleep inside a warm, safe, and dignified shelter environment instead of
Going mobile and getting creative: Preble Street’s Street Outreach Collaborative
The Street Outreach Collaborative (SOC), Preble Street’s mobile outreach team, focuses primarily on people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, with the highest need. The SOC drives around Portland in a blue, Preble Street branded van, (you’ve probably seen it!) looking to meet basic needs and distribute nutritious meals to people. Basic needs are the foundation for a
Mental health and homelessness: get to know the facts
Although we don’t have a vaccine for mental health or substance use disorders, we do have practical and effective solutions. They are the effective and evidence-based practices we know work — access to treatment, harm reduction services, mental health support, peer support groups, and perhaps most importantly, educating our community to reduce stigma and promote
View recent versions of the Elena’s Way Monitoring report below:
