Chicago Suntimes: ‘The need gets larger and larger’

Posted on by Vanessa Álvarez

By Neil Steinberg Jan. 23, 2022

The Night Ministry’s case manager Sylvia Hibbard checks on a person living at a homeless encampment — offering services from the street medicine van, such as free health care, food and other survival supplies — at North Kedzie Avenue and West Belmont Avenue Wednesday morning on the Northwest Side.
The Night Ministry’s case manager Sylvia Hibbard checks on a person living at a homeless encampment, offering services from the street medicine van, such as free health care, food and other survival supplies — at North Kedzie Avenue and West Belmont Avenue Wednesday morning on the Northwest Side.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

“We’re missing an outreach worker who normally drives, answers the phone, plans the route and does needle exchange,” Koruba says. “We have a reduced presence due to COVID. We’re struggling a little bit.”

So those duties are now theirs, the missing worker one tiny twist of the vise that is slowly crushing frontline social service agencies at the beginning of the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic.