Bailey-Boushay House Homefront

October Edition Newsletter

Inside this issue

Getting Real About Food | Summer Intern Spotlight: Rachel | Coming Soon | Special Thanks | 

 

Getting Real About Food

Practical solutions for healthier food choices

Every client can count on a nutritious and filling mid-day meal at Bailey-Boushay House, seven days a week.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of food at Bailey-Boushay House. Most new clients come here homeless, hungry and struggling not only with HIV/AIDS, but also with mental illness and addiction. The threat of food scarcity haunts them. “They’re focused on all those more basic needs,” says Brian Knowles, executive director at Bailey-Boushay, “not on taking HIV pills. So that’s where we start. We feed them, and that slowly builds trust. Eventually they allow us to care for them.” Only then can team members begin to introduce other methods to help clients succeed in HIV treatment and develop skills to rebuild their lives. Brian sums it up this way: “Food is the gateway to everything else we do here.”

Redefining good food and healthful eating

Nutrition education is one of the many “everything else” services at Bailey-Boushay. Shawntel Deloney, BBH clinical dietitian, helps residents and clients figure out small things they can do to eat better without giving up the taste and feeling of fullness they enjoy. Despite the very serious obstacles they’re facing — illness and side effects from medication, poverty and homelessness, isolation and boredom, fatigue and nausea — Shawntel’s education groups have a lot of fun. Weekly discussion in the diabetes education group, for example, is freewheeling and covers the waterfront: Healthy choices when food shopping in a convenience store; using electronic food stamps at farmers markets; how to remember the “bad” fats (Shawntel: “Those are the animal fats — you know, all the tasty ones.”) Shawntel encourages patients to celebrate the joy of eating and sharing food. “It’s a basic right,” she believes, “to have food that’s amazing and good.” Everyone needs both nutritional sustenance and emotional satisfaction. Shawntel describes healthy eating as the ability to balance “food that’s good for the body and food that feeds the soul.”

Seeing food from the eater’s perspective

When housing, food and money are scarce, or illness limits daily life, people face tough nutritional decisions. Shawntel thinks of Bailey-Boushay clients who have to ask themselves, “Do I get full or have fresh fruits and vegetables?” And she thinks of a resident with diabetes who candidly told her, “The food here gets boring, and McDonalds is exciting. I order double everything and eat it all.” She understands how people can feel as though they have no good options. “But my educational message is that you make choices for yourself. No matter who makes the food, you can make choices.” It doesn’t have to be painful or stressful. Shawntel offers two recent examples of trying small changes that made a big difference to health and well-being.

In August, nutritionist Shawntel Deloney (center) joins BBH clients John and J.R. to harvest a bumper crop of home-grown tomatoes.
Showing real-world, practical alternatives

Most clients and residents love soda. To encourage people to drink more water, Shawntel offers a box of sugar-free, low calorie Crystal Light packets to everyone who attends her weekly diabetes education group. “People absolutely love it,” she reports. Soda consumption is down (a real plus for people with diabetes) and Crystal Light is seen as a special treat at Bailey-Boushay. People who had never come to the group started coming just to get Crystal Light.

Getting to know your fruits and veggies

Another experiment was equally successful: growing food. Summer this year was an especially good time for Seattle first-timers to try their hands at a vegetable-and-herb garden. “The maintenance staff built raised beds on legs so everyone, even in wheelchairs, can participate,” explains Shawntel. The only garden rule: Don’t harvest unless you come to the group so we can make a decision about it. “They’re all really good about it,” Shawntel says. The crops thrived: peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, strawberries and herbs. And the gardeners learned from their labors of love. Regulars went out to the patio every day to check on how the watering was going and what was growing. The experiment also brought childhood memories of helping mom in the garden, and later memories of gardens in former homes. “Everything is a teaching experience for me,” Shawntel says. She encourages patients to treat their bodies like the garden: “There’s no harvest without great care.”

 

Note: Food in the outpatient program is funded exclusively by Bailey-Boushay House donors. Thank you for helping us gain our clients’ trust.

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 Summer Intern Spotlight: Rachel

Every year Bailey-Boushay House partners with Teens in Public Service (TIPS), an organization that places teens at nonprofits around Seattle to gain work experience and engage in their community. The intern this summer was Rachel, and right away she proved to be extremely helpful to team members and a favorite among clients. Nominated by Sandra Morrow, BBH recreational therapist, Rachel received an award for her leadership and commitment to her community. Sandra says,“Rachel has been a kind and steady friend to the people of Bailey-Boushay and truly touched the lives of many. She will be missed when she goes. We really wish we could keep her.” Rachel’s internship ended in August and she is currently in Ecuador with a bridge year program called Global Citizen Year. We wish Rachel all the best!

 

Rachel walking with Bailey-Biushay House in the 2014 Seattle Pride Parade.
Get to know more about Rachel

Q: What was one memorable thing a client said to you?
A: When a client told me my spirit animal!

Q: What was your favorite BBH outing?
A: My favorite outing was [my] first one with BBH at the Seattle Pride Parade.

Q: What is your favorite BBH meal?
A: The kitchen cooks up some pretty great beef stroganoff.

Q: What will you miss most about BBH?
A: The people! Everything about BBH is a support system.

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Coming Soon:

New Kitchen, New Menu

The much-needed renovation of our kitchen is underway. When it reopens late this fall, Bailey-Boushay will unveil a brand new menu. It’s been a decade since the last menu revamp. Recent years have shown asteady rise in patient rates of food insecurity, homelessness and diabetes. Clients and residents gave lots of feedback to chefs during recipe development and testing. Some old favorites will carry over, too:

• The self-serve breakfast bar (stocked with cereal, bread and bagels, PB&J, juice and milk) for all-day use by clients

• Free food trays for family members and visiting residents

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We are grateful to the following organizations for their recent gifts of $1,000 or more: 

• Bailey-Boushay House Volunteers
• Amerinet/Health Resource Services
• Aon Hewitt
• Emerald Services & Cedar Grove Composting
• Lease Crutcher Lewis
• National Purchasing Partners
• Boeing Employees Giving Program
• Microsoft Matching Gifts Program
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• The Seattle Foundation
• Truist
• United Way of King County 

 

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