News from Wheeler

Citing the sometimes-difficult financial balance for parents in frontline health care and teaching careers, for the second year in a row and with a larger gift, an anonymous donor is again supporting childcare and summer camp costs for Wheeler Health employees.

Intensive Family Preservation supports families involved with DCF due to concerns of abuse and neglect. The program is designed to maintain children safely in the home by helping parents develop skills to manage their lives, improve their parenting and connect to needed community resources.

Supportive Housing for Families provides families with support services, and access to safe, quality, affordable housing. The mission of SHF is to help DCF families thrive by finding homes in safe neighborhoods, learning skills to manage their housing independently, in order to provide their children with a stable home environment.

Care Coordination is an in-home, community-based program that collaborates with families of children and adolescents with behavioral and emotional challenges by identifying family strengths and arranging appropriate supports and services to maintain children or adolescents in the community.

Accessing same-day, walk-in primary care is now easier than ever for the Bristol and Waterbury communities.

A Community Baby Shower for expectant families and new parents living in Norwich, New London, Mansfield, Colchester, Killingly, Stonington, and surrounding areas will take place on April 25 from 3 to 6 pm at the UCFS Healthcare Community Room at 47 Town Street in Norwich, Connecticut.

Dozens of attendees honored an anniversary in Bristol for two decades of a highly successful model of home-based behavioral health treatment. Wheeler was intimately involved in the development of the Multisystemic Therapy – Building Stronger Families model in 2004-2005 and continues to be a leading provider around the state.

For more than 16 years, Wheeler’s Mobile Crisis Intervention Services (MCIS) program has served children and youth in the Greater Hartford region, right in their homes, schools, and communities. This approach helps to divert unnecessary visits to the emergency room or inpatient hospital stays.

With a new $250,000, multiyear grant, The Cigna Group Foundation is expanding access to health care in Hartford through a partnership with Wheeler Health.

Every day, across the state, dozens of Wheeler clinicians step out of their cars, ring a doorbell, and change lives in the most intimate setting, a family’s home.

A short video with Sharon Pendleton-Ponzani, director, Wheeler Foster Care Programs, highlights the need for loving foster homes in Connecticut and what individuals and families can do to help.

John and Brian Pica-Sneeden started their foster care journey nearly 30 years ago. Since then, they have adopted six of their foster children – one as recently as last month!

"Now, it's just a whole different perspective."

Sharon Pendleton-Ponzani, director, Wheeler’s Foster Care program, was a guest on Connoisseur Media’s “For the People Radio” show on November 17, where she highlighted Wheeler’s foster care programs and discussed the significance of National Adoption Month.

To provide same-day assessments and rapid access to follow-up care, Wheeler Health has been awarded a $600,000 federal grant as part of a $4.2-million funding package distributed to seven community health centers across Connecticut.