For many Dover-area churches and other places of worship, the sharp rise in unsheltered homelessness statewide means more people knocking on their doors or calling their offices searching for food, shelter or gas money.
The people answering those calls – an administrative assistant, for instance – are often the only person in the building; they may have some donated food or clothing on hand, but more substantial assistance is far outside of their wheelhouse.
Church and synagogue representatives gathered at Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Dover Tuesday to receive training on how to navigate those interactions.
Some questions covered complex situations - like whether they should keep offering assistance to someone who becomes belligerent. Others - like on from Christ Church Deacon Patricia Malcom were more practical.
“Some people drop boxes of canned goods off. We ask parishioners to drop off flip-top cans, because do homeless people even have can openers?” she asked.
“A lot of people don’t," replied Dover Interfaith Mission for Housing Board Chair Jeanine Kleimo.
The training also provided a chance for shelter providers to point out service gaps churches can fill.
Presbyterian Church of Dover Minister Dr. Mark Parsons says it pushed him to consider opening his church’s restrooms to people experiencing homelessness.
“I think that with proper safety protocols in place, we could certainly train laypersons," he said. "We have bathrooms in a warm building - what would it look like to staff those a few days a week?”
But both trainers and representatives from Dover-area congregations expressed frustrations with some seemingly intractable holes in Delaware's homeless services network. When asked how to work with a woman with serious mental health challenges who had appeared at a church's door after being asked to leave a local shelter for antagonizing other residents, trainers acknowledged that in some cases, there is no ideal place to refer a person in crisis.
