A homeless man wandered into a navigation center in East San Jose last month. He was injured, walking unsteadily with an open wound on his leg.
“I’ve been walking for 10 days, not knowing where to go, and I just landed here,” he said to a worker.
He had tried getting help in various places without success. Then, he entered the Grail Family Services navigation center in Capitol Park. With its opening celebration barely concluded, the new center immediately showed its value.
“We gave referrals and information on where he could get a shower and some food,” Veronica Goei, executive director of Grail Family Services, told San José Spotlight. “We asked for permission to call 911 so that an ambulance could take him to (Regional Medical Center). He said, ‘Thank you’ because someone paid attention and stopped to care.”
The navigation center, which opened in late September, brings San Jose, Santa Clara County and nonprofit partners together in an effort to connect East San Jose families with services and support. The navigation center offers case management, referrals to social services, parent workshops, after school programming and a math and reading mentorship program.
The crux of the model is to provide East San Jose residents community and social services in one place, breaking systemic barriers to care. The city-owned facility will be operated by Grail Family Services at the Capitol Park Neighborhood Center at 800 Peter Pan Ave.
“This navigation center represents an important shift on how we think about serving families in San Jose,” Goei said. “Too often, families are asked to navigate complicated systems on their own, trying to figure out which door to go through, which agency to call and where to turn next. We want this to be a place where families can come, be heard and connect to the people and resources they need.”
Grail is working with San Jose State University to create an internship program to provide the center with mentors and additional after school support.
Jessica Camacho, strategic manager for San Jose’s Children Youth Service Master Plan, said the navigation center is a neighborhood asset.
“People can just literally knock on the door and they’re like, ‘Hey, do you know about this? Do you know about that?’ And we fill in the gaps,” she told San José Spotlight. “It sets their worries at ease when they’re worried about things that happen around the neighborhood, things they see on the news.”
Several city departments collaborated with the navigation center’s creation. Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services chose Grail to operate it, Public Works helped redevelop it and the Housing Department provided financial resources for renovations. Plans are underway to have county outreach workers onsite and a satellite branch of the San Jose Public Library.
The center works with the city and county to offer residents a “no wrong door” approach to services, helping connect them with a personal transfer of care.
Andrea Flores Shelton, assistant director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, said the navigation center is one of the city’s many community facilities in need of a qualified community operator.
“Grail qualified … and they had this idea,” she told San José Spotlight. “They have a Children Youth Master Plan grant from us as one of our demonstration site partners. So, it was a great sort of marriage of the work they’re doing to advance the Children Youth Services Master Plan … and how the ‘no wrong door’ approach would actually work in a physical space.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong understands that mindset intimately. Growing up, she served as a translator for her family, taking buses from one service office to another, to be told they were in the wrong place.
“The center gives us an opportunity to turn the feedback we’ve been receiving from the community for years into action,” she said at the center’s opening. “We’re working toward having county community workers and more services and social workers out in the community where they are needed.”
San Jose Councilmember Peter Ortiz, whose district houses the navigation center, said it means a great deal to see investments being made on the East Side.
“It’s huge for our East San Jose families to be able to have a trusted place in their own neighborhood,” Ortiz told San José Spotlight. “We want it to feel like a family place, not simply another cold, government institutional building.”
Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].
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