Age Friendly Seattle virtual events—Civic Coffee Hours and a new series, Close to Home: Stories of Health, Tech and Resilience—offer older adults in the greater Seattle area a weekly opportunity to stay connected. You’ll learn how local government, nonprofit organizations, and community members cope with the “new normal” of COVID-19 and a wealth of other topics. Join us to get this valuable information, ask questions, and get answers!
Age Friendly Seattle and the Saying It Out Loud Conference have announced the second of two online panel presentations related to COVID and geared to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or two-spirit (LGBTQ+2S). “LGBTQ+2S Resilience: Are we thriving or just surviving during the COVID pandemic?” is a live panel presentation that will take place on Friday, July 31 from 1:00–2:30 p.m. At event time, log on to bit.ly/AgeFriendlyLive. No registration or log-in is required. A phone-in option is also available.
The City of Seattle’s Human Services Department has been on the ground outside and inside the CHOP since June 23 to support the City’s ongoing efforts to keep the area safe. HSD outreach staff and contracted outreach workers were on site providing outreach and social service resources to those living unsheltered or demonstrating. HSD is continuing this outreach following the closure of the CHOP and Cal Anderson Park earlier today. The area in and around Cal Anderson has historically been an area where unsheltered individuals stay overnight. These unsheltered communities have remained in the area throughout the protest. This outreach effort began following conversations between City leaders, CHOP, Black Lives Matter, and other community leaders and organizers, to ensure community members and demonstrators have access to services. June 23 through today, HSD has made 172 engagements (duplicated) with unhoused individuals, 36 referrals to shelter, and 30 connections to service providers. These figures are preliminary and provide a best snapshot of available data. Outreach staff have also made travel arrangements, provided diversion funds such as hotel vouchers and handed out basic needs, including bottled water and snacks.
Seattle children ages 1 through 18 years will enjoy free breakfasts, lunches, and snacks once again this summer through the Seattle Human Services Department’s (HSD) Summer Food Service Program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From July 6 through August 21, 2020, free meals will be made available at no charge to children across the City.
The City of Seattle, King County, and the UW Medicine are now offering free COVID-19 testing at two drive-up sites across Seattle. If you live, work, or regularly visit Seattle, the City is urging anyone with symptoms or with 15 minutes or longer exposure to someone with COVID-19 within the past two weeks. COVID-19 symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, sore throat, loss of smell, chills, body aches, headache, fatigue, diarrhea, runny nose, and congestion.
*Updated 6/1/2020 The Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) is pleased to announce the results of the 2020 Reentry/Rerooting Indigenous Community Healing Request for Proposal (RFP) that closed on April 14. This RFP was implemented in partnership with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and was developed from the City of… [ Keep reading ]
COVID-19 has left 1.6 million people in Washington state struggling to put food on the table. The need is especially high in parts of Seattle and South King County. For many communities facing food insecurity, their situation has been made even more challenging with meal and food bank programs impacted… [ Keep reading ]
The City of Seattle is set to deploy two shower trailers in locations across the City to support the hygiene needs for homeless residents within their communities. King Street Station will host a shower trailer five days per week, and a mobile shower trailer will be hosted in Lake City and Seattle Center, with more locations under consideration. King Street Station will also receive a hygiene station. In addition, a new hygiene map, located on the Seattle Human Services public website, that represents all open and available facilities was launched with this effort.
The City of Seattle and King County announced a number of additional steps over the last week to further expand hygiene services and add new shelter spaces for people experiencing homelessness. This expansion of resources is a continuation of ongoing work by the City and County to bring critically needed resources to those most in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For many communities facing food insecurity, COVID-19 has made a challenging situation even more difficult with meal and food bank programs impacted by the crisis. A number of food banks have reduced hours or their volunteers are not able to come in to help like they did before. Other programs face shortages of food resources. To meet this growing need in Seattle and surrounding communities, the City of Seattle partnered with the National Guard at the request of service providers. Locally, the National Guard has stepped up to fill gaps in our food network by offering the assistance of hundreds of members in Food Lifeline‘s SODO distribution center and at several food banks in the region. Even with all of these helping hands, some of our smaller community-based programs struggle to keep up with their usual activities, not to mention the increased demands brought on by this public health emergency. After re-deploying staff to support shifts in the City’s de-intensifying shelters at Miller and Garfield community centers, and working to open additional shelter capacity around the city, the Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) has been working to find ways to ensure these important food programs can also continue to operate. This month, we began re-deploying HSD employees to support shifts ranging from food preparation and cooking, to assembling bags and packaging meals, to line management and delivering food directly to vulnerable clients in their homes. Some of our staff who are vulnerable themselves are taking on administrative tasks that can be completed remotely from their homes. We gathered photos and reflections from some of their recent work with South Park Senior Center’s senior meal program…
