UNIONDALE- After one of the coldest winters in recent memory, we have all gotten a reprieve with record breaking temperatures in April. But, if you think it is a relief for the CSEA membership, and most Nassau residents, then it is even more so for those who don’t have a place to go to at night.

 

20 year Caseworker from Nassau Social Services, Patricia Rose, knows that firsthand. For the past 9 years, Patricia has been going out three to four times per week with the aid of local police, to parks, parkways, under bridges and boardwalks, looking for homeless people to help. This is part of the Homeless Intervention team, formed in 2002. Part of that team includes her supervisor Dough Pavlak, Welfare Examiner Pat Redmond, and Michael Kilbride of Veterans Affairs. 

 

Patricia’s goal is to inform these people that they are not alone and that there are services available to them at Social Services. She wants to make them aware of housing programs, and welfare programs among other things that they can take advantage of.

 

“Most of the time they are very grateful,” she says. “The stereotype of the homeless, sometimes wanting to be homeless, I don’t find to be true. They are usually seeking help, and most of the time they go and get it.”

 

With the economic downturn, Patricia says she has been finding more homeless, and for different reasons. “We find a lot more people now who have a hard time maintaining income, but because of the economy, have no car at all, or have to live in their car,” she says. A lot of homeless stem from drug and alcohol problems, but sometimes those drug and alcohol problems are now as a result of losing a job and a home.

 

She starts around 8am each day, and a lot of times get referrals from local churches, libraries and supermarkets on where the homeless might be. Things were especially busy this winter. Specifically in February, when she found 80 homeless, approximately 35 of them that she has seen before. She worked with the Office of Volunteer Services, and was able to provide coats for many homeless. Also, in December, with the help of her daughter, they prepared 500 toiletry bags to homeless that came to Social Services.

 

Karen Garber, in the office of communications at Social Services, calls Rose “a remarkable lady” who puts herself in difficult situations, sometimes in the freezing bitter cold at the crack of dawn. “I don’t know many people who can do her job,” she says. Garber even referred to a couple of times when she found people passed away from the frigid cold. She says after encountering something like that, most people wouldn’t be able to bounce back from it.

 

Patricia does admit that she has fallen in creeks, gotten tick bites, poison ivy, and hit her head under boardwalks, among other things. But her reason for continuing to do it, she says “I just find it so rewarding to be able to help people.”