Valle del Sol Community Health is a nonprofit organization that provides community wellness services, primary care, and integrated behavioral health services in Phoenix and is one of Social Spin’s partners.
Valle del Sol Community Health offers a range of services, including:
- Behavioral Health Services: These services encompass mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, crisis intervention, psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and support groups.
- Primary Care: Valle del Sol provides comprehensive primary care services
Glynda, Chief Changemaker at Social Spin speaks to how their partnership is incredibly helpful in catching people before they slip through the current health and help systems cracks. “When they come to us we have to act quickly. We would get folks that would need help with health or addiction issues and we learned if you don't get those folks the help they need, they might not come back.” This partnerships enable Social Spin to be ready and to act quickly.
Personalized engagement is a core value to Glynda. “It’s important to me to have personalized engagement with people. I have been to places and spaces where they treat you like, “next” they don’t look at you. I don’t want that. I want you to walk through those doors and feel comfortable, to feel safe, to know you are in a place that values you.”
Along with health and wellness checks Valle del Sol has a diabetes health class taught by Celeste. Celeste is an Integrated community health worker with Valle del Sol.
“When I started 8 months ago the classes were small. I started having conversations with folks, getting to know the people, we started providing some incentives and it started growing.”
It went from 4 people to now it’s capped at 20 people. She created a system for sign ups and teaches a five week class series with weekly check-ins.
She has an easy laugh and says no day is the same. There are all kinds of people with different backgrounds and reasons for being there. “It’s fun to facilitate, to adjust to how I can make it relevant to them and engaging. How can they like me doing this?”
- She starts training with mindfulness. She has a worksheet that has them think and write out their S.M.A.R.T.goals.
- Diabetes classes:
- What it is and the types
- Risk factors, what can be changed, what cannot be
- Nutrition
- Physical activity
- How Diabetes plays a role in our emotional experience.
She speaks to how she never tells them how to do any of it. “It's about teaching the correlation of behaviors and actions but I adjust to their living environments. It’s already so hard for them. I can give them the knowledge but because some don’t have a house to go to or reliable access to healthy foods. It’s so hard for them.
” I will bring food boxes with me for those that need food assistance.”
Celeste tells me, “I like when people ask what I do and I tell them I work in a health clinic. I teach diabetes classes to the homeless. People get confused, they ask, where are you going to teach, on the streets?? People get excited and really don’t know about places like Social Spin, they’re just naive. She laughs light heartedly, I like that I get to tell them about this place and what I do.”
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