The Peabody Health Department’s Division of Social Services recently submitted a grant application to the Lahey Medical Center, requesting $258,000 so that the department can hire bilingual case navigators to help immigrant families sheltering in hotels in the city.
According to Sara Grinnell, the division’s director, the grant application indicated a need for navigators who can speak Spanish and Haitian Creole, although the department wants to connect with residents in as many languages as possible.
“Our grant proposal is based on the additional needs that we’ve seen since we’ve brought on a mental health-care clinician,” Grinnell said. “We assessed that there’s a need for bilingual care.”
In a recent Board of Health meeting, Health Department Director Sharon Cameron said that Peabody received an additional 30 families during one week in February.
Cameron explained that the consolidation of some hotels that were hosting immigrant families and did not have service providers led to the closure of a hotel site in Revere, and that the state sent families to Peabody as a result.
“So now the Holiday Inn is 100% occupied by families in shelter,” Cameron said at the meeting. “And between three hotels, it’s just shy of 600 individuals. So it’s a lot of people.”
According to Grinnell, the bilingual case navigator would act as a connector to different services for the families.
“This person would connect residents of our community with different mental health-care needs and services, substance abuse services, could be health-care services,” Grinnell said. ”But they would really be helping support families and individuals that need additional access to care. It would be someone checking in on them, making sure that everything is happening that needs to.”
Grinnell said that the Health Department expects to find out about Lahey Medical Center’s final decision on March 15. The center is awarding $494,000 over a three-year period to one or two organizations.
“Peabody, other than Boston, is one of the communities really shouldering a lot of the responsibility for caring for these new residents,” Cameron said. “So that was kind of the focus of the grant application.”
