Outreach Programs

Meeting with families at a South Side shelter

To help people who are coping with homelessness, CCH community organizers offer outreach at shelters, street programs, and single-room occupancy facilities. Each month, three field organizers — Dollie Brewer, Rachel Ramirez, and Wayne Richard — visit 25 facilities serving families, youths and adults across Chicago, including new outreach at programs serving Spanish-speaking families.

Organizer Jim Picchetti mobilizes a new statewide network, organizing service providers in 9 suburban and downstate communities — Aurora, Bloomington, Elgin, Joliet/Will County, Maywood, Peoria, Rockford, Springfield and Waukegan/Lake County.

And youth attorney Beth Cunningham runs a mobile legal aid clinic that makes weekly stops at neighborhood programs serving unaccompanied youth in Chicago, including the HELLO youth group hosted on Tuesday nights by Wellington UCC Church, the Little Village Lawndale high school legal clinics, Peace Corner Youth Center, and Teen Living Programs.

During outreach sessions, CCH offers practical information. This includes telling parents about a homeless child’s right to free transportation to school, or informing low-income adults of eligibility to apply for charity care from non-profit hospitals.

Through outreach, CCH involves homeless youth, parents and single adults in advocacy campaigns that create access and economic opportunities for people living in extreme poverty. These campaigns include the Fair Care Coalition, which urges state regulators to require tax-exempt hospitals to deliver adequate levels of charity care to indigent patients.

For more information, contact Associate Executive Director Jim Field at jfield@chicagohomeless.org