Outreachin with the Health Department HomeGirls....

I'm off regular duty until Monday and enjoying some much needed quiet and personal time, doing only what I want to, when I want to. For most of us, this is a rare luxury indeed and I confess, I'm exceptionally slothful at the moment.

I do however want to bring folks up to speed on the health department ride-along we set up at our meeting last week.

On Tuesday of this week I picked up Lilly, Amy and Martha around 10am and made Community Care Fellowship (CCF) our first stop, since I had bus passes and some supplies, and knew lunch was being served at the facility as well.

I passed out approximately 100 bus passes and was able to get about that number of folks to see and meet the ladies face to face in the process.

They also were able to get a quick tour of the church's resources thanks to Reverend Pat, who happened to know Martha personally and was pleasantly surprised to see her accompanying me.

CCF doesn't see a lot of children, but occasionally kids do show up with parents from time to time. Having an ongoing and collaborative effort with the health department's screening and vaccination wagon will provide great benefits for any parent who shows up at CCF now, and the church also has a children's group that will undoubtedly make good use of the services provided by these ladies.

From CCF we decided to hit a couple of camps. Our first stop was R and V's new digs, since they were basically at a trailhead to a series of relatively new camps down on the Cumberland.

Amy and Martha provided the down-low to everyone who'd listen, while Lilly answered questions.

From there we moved into the official Tent City sites and I was absolutely shocked at how many new camps had sprung up since the last time I'd been down, which was less than a month ago.

Frankly, I've never seen so many people on the protected side; it looked as though every single existing campsite was in use, and a number--a BIG number - of new sites had been set up as well. Perhaps for the first time, I felt that Tent City actually had enough of a population to be considered an actual city.

We didn't wander "the other side of the tracks" while we were in the area; owner presence in that section has supposedly been frequent and threatening, so we erred on the side of lawful caution and spent our time only where we were within our legal rights to be. We spent a good thirty minutes wandering around talking to folks, then headed off to meet with Jeannie Alexander at the Nashville Homeless Power Project.

Jeannie was running a tad late however, so we decided to head over to another camp location at the northern end of the city and stopped in at Dave's camp for a bit.

We spoke with Dave briefly and he was positively gushing about the good work the women were attempting to do; as I think about it, just about every single person we spoke with throughout the day shared similar sentiments with the crew.

We headed back downtown and hooked up with Jeannie at her office, at which point the four ladies basically kicked my old male arse to the curb and chatted about serving the kids in our area that needed assistance the most.

I knew Jeannie would be an excellent resource for them and she did not disappoint.

We finished up with a quick lunch at a little restuarant in the Arcade and I delivered them in one piece back at their office with an offer to take them "outreachin" anytime they felt the need.

I'm holding out the greatest of hopes that these ladies will be able to make their proposed effort a longterm reality here in Nashville; longterm in the sense that it exists for as long as we must deal with homelessness in our city.

The scope of their original effort has increased substantially since we met with Clifton Harris and I do believe Jeannie's input added even more options and locations to their list of "to visits."

Make no mistake, this is an extremely important endeavor.

While the mobile kid's screening van may not offer acute care for sick or injured children, what they do offer is the first step to entrance into school for these kids, as well as initiating some protection by way of TennCare applications for the child's longterm health.

By getting the kids screened and vaccinated, they not only provide the necessary paperwork for kids to attend school, they also minimize the chances that any one of these kids could end up with a debilitating disease or condition that in the longrun, could end up costing them - and the taxpayers - the misery of a preventable condition, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in ancillary and hidden costs associated with caring for them.

Lilly, Amy and Martha - whenever you need someone to hit the streets with, just give me a call, I would be absolutely honored to take you with me again.

If you're interested in supporting the efforts of the mobile kid's screening van, especially as it relates to homeless outreach services, please contact Tony Halton or Donna Sumners over at the health department, I'm sure they'd enjoy speaking with you.