Joseph & Mary’s Home had a big year in 2022 and has big plans for 2023. Top on the list of accomplishments was the opening of Mary’s Home, a new 10-bed medical respite facility for women experiencing homelessness. Executive Director Beth Graham penned a letter highlighting accomplishments of 2022 and looking ahead to 2023.

Following is the full text of her letter.

Year in Review: Celebrating Expansion and Journeys of Hope in 2022

Dear Board Members, Partners and Friends,

The new year presents an opportunity to reflect upon the past year, and I thought I would take a moment to share reflections on Joseph & Mary’s Home.

Our proudest and most impactful accomplishment of 2022 was opening a new 10-bed medical respite facility for women called Mary’s Home. Expanding to serve medically-fragile women experiencing homelessness through the opening of Mary’s Home was truly the culmination of a long-held dream of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine (CSAs), hard work by our board and staff and incredible support from the community. In a time when the importance of home had never been clearer, the community responded generously to help the CSAs’ dream of providing women a safe, caring place to rest and heal following a hospitalization come true. Just yesterday, I spoke with a new resident of Mary’s Home who has experienced homelessness for several years. She said, “I thank God for this place.”

We believe that the values of the CSAs call for nothing less than excellence for those who need our care, which requires quality and sustainability. To this end, we have acquired an electronic medical record (EMR) system, invested in more training and support for staff, strengthened our policies and procedures and added an Intake Coordinator, to be more efficient and responsive to those referring their patients as well as to the clients who are in desperate and urgent need. Implementing new, efficient processes is important to maximize our limited resources, but juggling capacity building and expansion is not easy. We are blessed to have outstanding back-office support from the Sisters of Charity Health System, funders who recognize our need for expert consultants, amazing partners within the continuum of providers who help the unhoused, and a staff who embraces change in the service of our residents.

Looking ahead to 2023, we are continuing to push ourselves to meet our mission.

  • The EMR system will enable us to better collect, report and analyze our outcomes and use this information to continue to enhance our services.
  • We will advance the renovation of a new space for Joseph’s Home to be located in the front half of the Mary’s Home building—giving us the physically accessible space that we need to best serve the men in our care, men who often have significant physical limitations.
  • We will seek Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) accreditation, an internationally-accepted standard of quality. Accreditation demonstrates high quality and can lead to funding support from public and private agencies who require or value accreditation.
  • As the only medical respite provider in Northeast Ohio, we are forced to confront a need that is much larger than our 21 beds. Rather than build more beds, we want to take our care to people experiencing homelessness wherever they are. We are starting carefully with a pilot of 20 individuals, but, if we are successful, we may serve more people in this way in the future.
  • Finally, we are evaluating all that we do. In collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and Better Health Partnership, we will be publishing retrospective studies looking at our outcomes, and, we believe, evidencing the value of medical respite as a disrupter of homelessness.

None of this happens without you, our dear friends, partners, supporters, volunteers and servant-leaders. You inspire us with your generosity, you keep us grounded in our mission, and you show great compassion to our residents, helping them feel cared for and heard. I cannot thank you enough, and I am so grateful for all that we did in 2022 and truly excited for all that we will do together in 2023.

Happy New Year!

Yours in mission,

Beth Graham
Executive Director