Sanford Health Partners With Park Place For New Program

Sanford Health Of Bemidji is partnering with Park Place to provide some new services to tenants. Park Place provides safe housing to those who are homeless or are suffering from addiction.

“This project is for three years, so we want to see what we will accomplish in three years and then we’ll see if we can do a new one or shift the focus,” says Henry Scere, a behavioral health counselor with Sanford who works directly with the new program.

The new project was made possible by a grant from the Minnesota Health and Human Services Department. The grant was awarded last August.

“The grant itself is considered a HSASMI grant, so housing support for adults with serious mental illness, that’s what the HSASMI part stands for through the state. So there’s a whole evidence-based practice behind this housing first model and the idea that before anyone can focus on really changing anything in their life, their basic needs need to be met, and housing is one of those basic needs,” says Ashlea McMartin, a clinical supervisor with Sanford Health who also works with Park Place.

Scere was hired in November to help the residents of Park Place. His main goals will be case management, outreach and identifying where more people can live to help alleviate the homelessness problem in Bemidji.

“One of the things that I did in this program is to develop a crisis plan so if we put these people in an apartment, what is the crisis plan just in case of crisis? What can we do? And who can they call? Who can they reach out to?”

Scere adds, “We are focusing on giving those who are homeless a permanent place to live and most especially those who are homeless and then addictive.”

We reached out to Park Place to get their thoughts on the partnership. Lori Reilly, the regional housing director of the Center City Housing Corp, which manages Park Place says in a statement: “The community has been extremely supportive of the Park Place project from day 1. Park Place has partnered with Sanford to provide case management, behavioral health support and nursing as an additional help to tenants living in the building. It’s been a great partnership. We look forward to continuing.”

That thank you to the community was echoed through a message from Sanford Health.

McMartin says, “We have a lot of need in Bemidji and it’s our community that makes something like this possible. It’s the different providers that wrote letters of support to say, ‘hey, I think Park Place and Sanford could really do a great job partnering together.'”

If anyone knows someone who needs services provided by Park Place, they can contact Henry Scere. He can be reached by email at [email protected].