Direct Care – Access to Self-Care Products and Services
The first step to restoring and maintaining dignity for those suffering from housing insecurity.
Direct Care often serves as guests’ first connection to WLP. The Direct Care team warmly welcomes women to the community, building supportive relationships and providing essential supplies for daily and urgent needs, including feminine hygiene products and emergency clothing. They facilitate onsite laundry and showers and manage a “post office” (WLP provides its address for guests to safely receive and store their mail and vital documents). Safe hygiene facilities are out of reach for many unhoused guests, especially those who sleep outside. WLP guests took 4,687 showers and had 3,198 loads of laundry washed by the Direct Care team in FY24.
The Direct Care team is tasked with welcoming a growing number of first-time guests to WLP and assisting them with their most pressing basic needs. Providing immediate solutions (e.g., a new coat or transit pass) builds optimism and trust. Many new guests arrive in vans as a part of the city’s “Recovery Route,” which is an effort to decentralize addiction recovery services from the Mass. and Cass area. In response, Direct Care staff undergoes a variety of impactful trainings, including a de-escalation unit focused on strategies for avoiding and defusing conflict and calming agitated guests, as well as continued lessons in trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing.
Through a caring approach, the Direct Care team is both physically and emotionally present, ready to assess and help guests access critical services both within and outside WLP. They frequently introduce guests to medical staff, WLP Advocates, or other non-profit community partners. Most importantly, they work to help guests feel settled and safe in the WLP community.
We strive to restore a sense of dignity to our guests by greeting them with unconditional respect, offering immediate support, and providing them with:
a delicious meal
a hot shower
laundry services
mail services
We provide personal care items that are difficult to obtain and store such as:
sunscreen
water bottles
lotion
sanitary napkins and tampons
soap and shampoo
toothpaste and toothbrushes
We offer emergency seasonal clothing, ponchos, new winter coats, hats, gloves, and scarves, as well as a variety of other useful items and household appliances that are donated to the shelter.
Get Involved
Toiletries, birthday gifts, and emergency and seasonal clothing are always needed by our guests.