Finding Home, Hope, and a Future: Achieving Integrated Social Services at Harbor Care

Finding Home, Hope, and a Future: Achieving Integrated Social Services at Harbor Care tells the story of a trail blazing nonprofit in Nashua, New Hampshire. Originally named Harbor Homes, in July 1982 the newly incorporated organization began work in its remodeled group home supporting nine clients with persistent mental illnesses. Forty years later, the nonprofit, now named Harbor Care, owns twenty-eight facilities and is supporting over five thousand individuals and families, 93 percent of whom are low-income. Currently Harbor Care's clients, in a wide variety of groups needing assistance, access safe housing, medical/dental/mental health care, substance misuse treatment, and other critical supports such as food, transportation, and employment services. All are provided within an integrated system of social services. With the goal of helping clients become more independent, the nonprofit's policies and practices have significantly reduced homelessness in the city and assisted clients to live self-directed, productive lives. Finding Home, Hope, and a Future explains how such an extensive network of clients and services came to be by highlighting personal stories of individuals who helped build the pioneering organization.