Healing House
is a place where a family or child experiencing homelessness can go to heal after surgery.
Imagine you have just delivered a baby and your family is experiencing homelessness. The shelters are only open at night. You are on the street with your newborn and other children for 10 hours a day. You have no safe place for your newborn to sleep.
HOMELESS AT BIRTH
Until the Healing House opened on July 9, 2019, there was no safe place for families experiencing homelessness to go when a member of the family needed to prepare for a medical procedure or to recuperate after childbirth or hospitalization.
When someone is discharged from the hospital and requires follow-up recuperative care, such care is delivered by home health providers. However, you cannot receive these services if you have no home. Healing House can be that home, so home health providers can provide follow-up care to individuals as they recuperate.
Healing House, located in Madison, is an 8-bed facility, providing 24/7 recuperative care by medically-trained staff and volunteers for up to 28 days. Three meals a day and childcare assistance are provided. In addition, case management, provided by The Road Home Dane County, helps to end the cycle of homelessness and locate permanent housing.
Since the doors opened, Healing House has been a safe haven for numerous families. The generosity of community members, through donations of money, time, services and items, has made this program possible.
“K’s” Story:
Doctors advised surgery to help her little girl, but given her experience with shelters, K. knew that recovery on the street would be difficult, if not impossible. Her luck changed when a shelter social worker connected her with MUM.
“Within two weeks of coming here I was able to get a part-time job and get my family back on a schedule,” she said. “Healing House staff have been so helpful. I’ve been able to get back to where I was before I lost everything.”
For additional information, or to arrange a formal presentation on Healing House, please contact the Healing House Program Manager: healinghouse@justdane.org or (608) 575-8831.