FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Fayetteville nonprofit New Beginnings NWA is starting its own new chapter with the first and only medical respite for unhoused people in the Natural State.
The city's planning commission has approved the addition of medical respite cabins to the nonprofit's campus of cabins for the unhoused.
The program is called A Place to Heal, a cabin on the perimeter of the New Beginnings campus dedicated to people experiencing homelessness who are well enough to be discharged from the hospital but too frail to be on the streets.
"Our hope is to increase their health and decrease the need for them to go back into the hospital for the same problem, or to prolong the healing from whatever it was that put them in the hospital in the first place," Janet Gardner, the director of healthcare at New Beginnings, said.
On a day-to-day basis, New Beginnings residents receive treatment from Gardner, who has already nursed multiple residents back to good health. One resident named Rodney Christian has lived there for three years and says, "Without her presence being here it would be rough."
Christian had a torn rotator cuff and needed physical therapy for two months.
"It had gotten bad to where I couldn't lift up a phone or a cup of coffee," he said. "I was walking around like Frankenstein, and I was scared. I was reluctant to allow, you know, people to help me out. Miss Janet talked me right through it. She just taught me right through it, told me everything is going to be okay."
Now, he says he's more than okay. But, imagine if that were the case for those who are unhoused.
"We saw the need that somebody just having the three foundations sort of healing— having rest, having nutrition, and having hygiene. And those are things that people experiencing homelessness don't get," Gardener said.
Right now, a cabin on campus is already being used as a place for healing, but the plans going forward are to add five cabins: Three designated with beds for people, one designated for physical or occupational therapy, and one will be used as a bathroom facility.
Gardner says home health, physical therapy, and physicians from Washington Regional, who is a partner of New Beginnings, can come to these cabins to provide specific services.
Executive Director Solomon Burchfield says the nonprofit plans to have a soft opening in mid-April to "dedicate two of the current cabins that New Beginnings and start utilizing them for people as they discharged from the hospital to temporarily stay and recover."
The process throughout the program flows through "the hospitals where people are receiving that care will initiate reaching out to New Beginnings to make a referral," Burchfield said. "And then we'll work hand in hand to ensure that the person is a good fit and that their level of care is what we can meet, and then they will kind of hand them off to us. While they stay here, the hospital will still stay involved with their care and will begin to track their progress. And at the point when they're healthy enough to be able to leave, that's when they'll be able to leave."
New Beginnings is participating in the annual nonprofit fundraiser NWA Gives with hopes of raising $75,000 to pay for the new cabins. The NWA Gives fundraiser is set for April 4. With the money they raise, Burchfield hopes by the end of June, the additional cabins and bathroom will be completed.
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