The Family Help Desk
What is the Family Help Desk?
In clinics where our Family Help Desk programs operate, physicians can "prescribe" food, housing, health insurance, job training, fuel assistance, or other resources for their patients as routinely as they do medication. Located in the waiting room and staffed by college volunteers, our Family Help Desks "fill" these prescriptions by connecting patients with key resources.
The Family Help Desk's straightforward, preventative referrals to government and community resources - such as affordable housing, child care, employment, GED classes, and job training - enable families to avert crises and to access increased income and education, which have been documented to result in better long-term health outcomes.
Project HEALTH's 16 Family Help Desks are located in pediatric outpatient, adolescent, and prenatal clinics, newborn nurseries, pediatric emergency rooms, health department clinics, and federally qualified health centers. They reach over 4,000 families annually.
Why is it important?
As one pediatrician at Boston Medical Center explained: "The Family Help Desk is a part of our team. I can't do it all. The one social worker we have can't do it all. We're just barely staying above water. The Family Help Desk volunteers have excellent listening skills, aren't limited by time, realize this work is important, and are passionate about it. They're an exceptional group of human beings that make me proud of humanity."
Who is the Family Help Desk team?
College students are uniquely equipped to do this work. They have the time, tenacity, and creativity required to navigate the complex landscape of community services and government bureaucracies. Their assistance to families is often as straightforward, and as critical, as finding the one available child care slot in a family's neighborhood, tracking down the phone number of the right person at a housing agency, or explaining an array of job training options so a parent can choose the one that's best for her. Volunteers follow up with all families regularly to identify and troubleshoot any linguistic, logistical, or bureaucratic hurdles they have encountered and ensure that are successful in accessing them.
Our volunteers work in close partnership with their clinics' physicians, social workers, and lawyers to ensure that Family Help Desk services are well-integrated into the landscape of clinic services and effective in meeting the needs of patients and their families. Volunteers receive a minimum of 13 hours of training from Project HEALTH staff and experts in the field prior to beginning their work with families, and they participate in ongoing trainings on new resources and best practices throughout their time as volunteers. They also work in partnership with the social workers and lawyers in their clinics to ensure that those families who require professional intervention receive it.
