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A38
July 10 • 2008
iN
Rebuilding Lives
This nurse uses a
staff of 90 and a $9
million budget to
help lift up Detroit's
homeless.
Alan Hitsky
Associate Editor
H
er agency is just south of
the Detroit Cultural Center
and the Detroit Medical
Center ... and on the edge of the Cass
Corridor.
Her old, six-story building at
Woodward and Peterboro has 72 new
studio apartments and dozens of old
nooks and crannies for doctors, nurs-
es, caseworkers, a "members' club:'
and certified peer specialists who
have helped themselves off the streets.
Some of the staff spend most of their
day checking on their "consumers"
at soup kitchens, under viaducts and
freeway bridges.
She is Irva Faber-Bermudez, presi-
dent and chief executive officer of
the Detroit Central City Community
Mental Health agency (DCCCMH).
Last year, her agency helped almost
4,100 Wayne County adults with men-
tal health or substance abuse issues,
including 930 with housing. Fifty per-
cent of the clients were homeless at the
time of admission.
How does a nice Jewish girl get to
a place like this? Faber-Bermudez
protests that this has always been her
calling. Her late father was a Detroit
booster all his life and her late mother
was a political activist. "I've always
loved the city;' she says.
Growing up near Seven Mile and
Evergreen in Detroit she graduated
from Henry Ford High School, then
earned her B.A. in psychiatric nursing
from the University of Michigan. After
working at the Children's Psychiatric
Hospital in Ann Arbor and Lafayette
Clinic in Detroit, she earned her M.A.
in child and adolescent psychiatric
nursing at Wayne State University in
Detroit.
Faber-Bermudez then worked for
the Visiting Nurse Association, for St.
Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, at
Sinai Hospital of Detroit as director of
nursing services for psychiatry and in
Irva Faber-Bermudez runs a $9 million
agency.
a similar but expanded role at Detroit
Receiving Hospital. A supervisor at
Receiving told her about the opening
at DCCCMH 11 years ago.
"What I am doing here she says,
"is what I was always doing: bring-
ing people together as a team to help
people struggling with illness to cope'
At the same time, during her tenure
at DCCCMH, the agency and the field
of community mental health have
been changing. Patients are consum-
ers and encouraged to make choices
in their own care. In addition to the
72 studio apartments on Peterboro,
DCCMH has 24 one- and two-bed-
room apartments in a building near
Woodward and Grand Boulevard,
and 96 units in private buildings
throughout Wayne County, including
Dearborn.
Part of the change in the mental
health field is reflected in DCCCMH
policies: It doesn't wait until people are
"cured" to put a roof over their heads.
People needing housing are placed,
Name: Irva Faber-Bermudez
Job: president, CEO of Detroit
Central City Community Mental
Health
Education: B.S., University of
Michigan; M.S., Wayne State
University
Age: 58
Home: Royal Oak
Family: Husband, Manuel; sons,
Sandro, 27, Michael, 22
Synagogue: Adat Shalom