Homemaking & Home Health Aides, Friendly Visitors Progam, Training Apartment Program
Urban Community Homemaking
Urban Community Homemaking was founded in 1973 by a group of women united in their desires to offer improved and expanded home services to members of their community. The program provides homemaking, home health aide, chore, and friendly visitor services to people who are disabled, frail or elderly in Boston's urban neighborhoods.
Our goal is to prevent unnecessary institutionalization and assist and support families with care giving. In addition, our staff who are local residents, receive training and stable employment which contributes to the economic health of our community. Over 250 people receive services monthly. Nearly all are low-income clients who require ongoing home care support to remain safely in their homes.
Homemaking & Home Health Aides
In its training and employment practices, the agency has developed and uses a unique concept, "Peer Homemakers and Home Health Aides." These are trained employees attuned to the language and culture of the people with whom they work. Familiar and reliable assistance is particularly important in serving a frail population that is constantly dealing with the multiple losses of functional ability, independence, and friends.
Our employees receive ESL training so that they are fully equipped to meet the needs of the people we serve. They are trained to teach efficient household management techniques and encourage family members to assume responsibility for the client whenever possible. Our staff are also encouraged to help ease the loneliness and isolation many of our clients experience by being empathetic.
Friendly Visitors Program
While many public and private agencies have formed over the last two decades to provide home care services to the elderly, state cutbacks have significantly decreased both the number of people served and the hours of services offered. To solve the problem, Urban Community collaborated with Senior Companions of Boston and the Massachusetts Association for the Blind to create the Friendly Visitors Program.
The program is designed to address the support and social needs of vulnerable, low-income elders and disabled citizens who are not eligible for adequate home care, particularly on weekends and holidays when isolated people feel most alone. We assist disabled and elderly people with shopping and errands, accompanying them outside for visits and light exercise, provide light homemaking, help to organize activities of daily living, and encourage hobbies, interests, and outside contacts.
Massachusetts Jobs With Justice is organizing against Walmart's actions nationwide and will offer a briefing for community leaders on the situation on Thursday, May 26. This meeting will be held at the Jobs with Justice, located at 3353 Washington Street #2 in Jamaica Plain at 3 p.m. The meeting will examine how communities have fought Wal-Mart in other cities. 
Boston City Hall (May 19, 2011) – Boston City Councillor Charles C. Yancey and the Boston City Council’s Committee on City, Neighborhood Services and Veterans Affairs will hold a public hearing on Monday, May 23, 2011 at 6:00 p.m. at The Great Hall, 5 Norfolk Street [sic] in Dorchester, to scrutinize the City of Boston’s proposal for establishing agricultural gardens on four Dorchester parcels. [The Great Hall is located at 6 Norfolk Street, Dorchester, MA].
