On Tuesday, May 19, our Executive Director Bob Gittens joined fellow Executive Directors Celina Miranda of Hyde Square Task Force and Priscilla Hellwig of Enchanted Circle Theater to on a webinar panel hosted by the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. The trio discussed how our non-profits were impacted by and are responding to COVID-19.

Each nonprofit leader represented a different approach to serving communities and working towards social justice. CFCS offers a wide range of services for youth and families with a diverse range of needs, living in the relatively large geographical area of Greater Boston; Hyde Square Task Force engages youth ages 6 to 25 living in the Hyde/Jackson Square neighborhood of Jamaica Plain in college prep and cultural enrichment; and Enchanted Circle Theater provides artistic education and outlets for creative expression to youth in Western Massachusetts. Thanks to our diversity of missions, the panel provided a wide representation of non-profit needs and perspectives.

Bob spoke on the initial impact of the virus, shedding some light on how CFCS dealt internally with the Governor’s declared state of emergency. “Because we were deemed essential by the Governer, we had to figure out very quickly how to keep our clients safe while also keeping our staff safe and healthy,” Bob said. “It was a pretty dramatic change... Young people in our Independent Living situations were losing their jobs. We had workers at our group homes who were diagnosed, or had to be quarantined because they’d come into contact with somebody with COVID. So there was a lot of scrambling at the very beginning, trying to figure out what the appropriate response was. I will say, I’m amazed at just how well everybody has come together to deal with this crisis.

“There was so much uncertainty,” Bob continued. “The one thing you want at a time like that was information, and there was no information to be found... It really was a time when we all had to come together and support each other. We looked at what we needed to do for our staff, and what we needed to do for our clients.” Bob described how, for example, to care for youth in foster care, we determined which cases we’d need to check on in person during the first few days of quarantine, and which cases can be managed virtually. We also figured out how to maintain communication with foster families with technology, so there was no gap in service.

Technology has revealed new options for CFCS that we previously hadn’t seen. “We’ve seen that we’re now able to communicate with our current clients in ways we might not have been able to before,” said Bob. “[We] can communicate more frequently, sometimes [we] can get more information. So it really is changing things I think for the long term.”

Bob articulated a bigger question on the horizon for CFCS that’s emerged from this crisis. “We’ve always said that we serve primarily Greater Boston. But now, thanks to technology, those geographical boundaries aren’t the same as they were six months ago.” CFCS is thinking about how we can use technology in new ways to serve folks outside of our traditional geographic range, which would greatly increase the number of people who could benefit from our programs!

“In all of this, a light’s been shined on wealth disparity,” Bob was careful to point out. “We're all aware of [social disparity] but it’s really come into prominence during this whole process.” CFCS has been able to put much-needed resources in the hands of our staff, but many times our clients don’t have access to those same resources. To address this, Bob said, we’re working with community partners such as Silver Linings Mentoring and One Simple Wish to provide our clients with these resources, but we’re also thinking about how we can proactively address these disparities moving forward.

Thank you to the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network for having us, and to everyone who attended the webinar! You can watch a recording of the panel’s full discussion here.