patient stories: Ivy

How 15 Years of Comprehensive Healthcare Changed One Family’s Life 

For a single mother facing homelessness and unemployment, CCHP was a lifeline 

In 2009, during a period of rampant evictions in New York City, single mother Ivy was evicted from the rent-stabilized apartment in Queens, that had been in her family for three decades. 

Ivy’s childhood home and shelter for her toddler-aged twin daughters and middle-school-aged son was taken away over a preventable court issue. Unhoused with three young children, Ivy was despondent but determined to get help. 

A friend told her how the Center for Comprehensive Health Practice offered therapy. At the time, Ivy worked in East Harlem at an organization just three avenues away from CCHP, close to where her kids went to elementary school.

“I found out they were offering services to families of people in recovery from alcohol,” she recalls. “Even though I never really considered myself a severe alcoholic or drug user, I have used substances to that level of feeling happy and taking me away for a little bit. So I said, ‘Why not, let me just apply and go through the process so I can get services that could be all under one roof.’ ” 

CCHP went on to offer therapy for both Ivy and her children during a time of relentless struggle. Fearing how housing instability would impact her kids, the chance for them to get mental health services in the same place and at the same time felt like a saving grace. 

For over a decade, Ivy’s family became familiar figures at CCHP — both as therapy and primary care patients. When the kids weren’t in session, they would play Jenga and other games in the playroom with CCHP’s child-care staff. As the years went on, Ivy's housing situation remained tenuous, and her family moved to various other boroughs — staying with relatives in the Bronx, finding temporary housing in downtown Manhattan, or living in Brooklyn with a friend. Still, though the commute was long, they continued to make the trek to CCHP in East Harlem for their weekly appointments, no matter the distance (even when it was more than a 90-minute journey from Brooklyn). 

“Especially when things are so tumultuous and crazy, it’s so important to have this constant,” says Ivy whose children are now young adults. “I feel like CCHP was always a safe space that they could go to, and where I could receive therapy while they receive therapy or go to their doctor visit. It was fantastic. It was all a one-stop shop. And everyone there was fantastic.”

Providing a Light in a Dark Time

Even though the girls always saw CCHP as a fun place to play, they started to resent the long trek to East Harlem. But Ivy kept going because she could see the positive impact of having a consistent outlet for the girls to talk through anything and everything. According to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA), relationships with caring adults (such as those within one’s extended community) can help children facing homelessness build resilience. 

Access for mental-health services is already difficult, but for parents — especially single parents — childcare is an enormous barrier to all kinds of healthcare including therapy.  For low-income families in New York, facing life in a city where financial inequality is plainly evident, so many aspects of life can feel unfair and inconvenient — from accessing social services to finding adequate education. To know that Ivy could bring her kids with her to CCHP and that they could get treatment was “a relief.” 

But CCHP had much more to offer her family than convenient therapy. When Ivy lost her full-time job, she says CCHP’s employment-resources staff — which supports patients across the center’s various programs, from addiction services to primary care — was a lifesaver. They helped her put her resume together, provided her a space to work on revamping her job-search materials, and even provided motivating encouragement during a dark time. 

CCHP also delivered a literal breath of fresh air for the family. Rachel Heyman LCSW, former CCHP Director of Behavior Health and Addiction services, who worked at CCHP for about 12 years, encouraged Ivy’s daughters to apply for a scholarship at a summer camp where she worked, to get them out of New York’s oppressive July and August heat. The girls applied and won the grants to attend The Main Idea at Camp Walden, a summer camp for economically disadvantaged girls in Denmark, Maine, attending several years in a row and even returning as camp counselors. 

Ivy recognized that her relationship with CCHP goes well beyond appreciation for therapy, childcare, employment support, and other opportunities. CCHP was part of a holistic strategy that addressed nearly every aspect of her life. “For me, as a single mother, I didn't have a safety net whatsoever,” she says. “So if I lost my job, that's it. I can't pay bills or can't pay for daycare, etc., etc. I lost my apartment. And then, four years later, I lost my full-time job. It just was one thing after the next.” 

A Breakthrough After a Long Fight 

When her girls were in middle and high school, Ivy’s housing and employment struggles raged on. The family lost a second apartment after a judge deemed her freelance income working for a variety of educational-arts organizations insufficient. The family lived all over the Tri-State area, from the Bronx to the Lower East Side to Connecticut, and to Brooklyn, where for several years a friend’s attic apartment became their home. 

Through what Ivy refers to as “enormous pressure,” she had one major dream to keep her going: to send her girls to college. She didn’t get the opportunity to earn a college degree herself, though she still plans to at some point. “Part of the reason why we got into all this mess was work,” she notes. “Not having the degree, and being sort of shut out from job opportunities, because of not having an education. So I just wanted to set them up so that they don't ever have to be shut out.” 

As Ivy worked toward this dream, CCHP was a steady source of support, which kept the family afloat. “It helped create more stability,” she recalled. “Having that counseling at CCHP and having those consistent groups of people in our lives and having that space was absolutely helpful. During those times, it just grounded us. It helped me to face reality in a constructive way.” 

One anchor in the CCHP ecosystem — which kept the family connected to CCHP and kept them coming back year after year, even when they lived further and further away — was the family’s close relationship with Dr. Mariely Fernandez. CCHP’s pediatrician of over 16 years has been the girls’ doctor since the very first day Ivy’s family arrived at CCHP, and has gone on to help them navigate everything from child immunizations to puberty. 

After a string of disappointing and dissatisfying experiences with other doctors, Ivy felt a shift when she first met Dr. Fernandez. “She’s just so down to earth,” she raves. “She's great. I love the way she addresses and talks to me. It makes me feel comfortable and at ease. I leave there just feeling good…feeling like my kids are really getting the quality of care they need.” 

While her daughters were finishing up high school, Ivy landed a full-time job working in administration at a major university in New York. Now she happens to be employed at the very same school at which her son is a senior and one of her daughters is now a freshman. (And, as a university employee, Ivy enjoys a critical benefit: her children’s five-figure tuition is paid for by the school.) Her other daughter is also thriving at a college of her own.

“I'm super proud,” says Ivy, beaming as she talks about her kids in college. In reflecting on the past she said, CCHP “was definitely the best thing that's happened to my family during those years. For sure.”

Research and writing for this story provided by Gina Ryder.