YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – In December 2023, Nancy Voitus, executive director at Catholic Charities Regional Agency, received a telephone call from Dr. Melinda Smith, a gynecologist affiliated with Mercy Health St. Elizabeth Hospital.
“She called to tell me she was retiring and that she had a project she really wanted to push,” Voitus recalls.
The idea was to create a medical respite program for an underserved and vulnerable population – those who are well enough to be discharged from a hospital, are not qualified for a skilled nursing facility or rehab, and are also either homeless or cannot return home.
“You don’t want to release them into homelessness and you don’t want to release them to a shelter,” Voitus says, since they would most likely require some follow-up care akin to a home health or health education program. “We started talking to a lot of different people.”
The answer is the Respite of Hope, a care facility housed in the Judge Joseph Donofrio Center at 550 W. Chalmers Ave. in Youngstown. The project is the culmination of a dedicated partnership between Catholic Charities, Mercy Health St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, Mercy Health Foundation Mahoning Valley, Meridian HealthCare, the Ursuline Sisters of Youngstown, and the Sisters of the Humility of Mary. Also supporting the effort are private donors. The care facility opened its doors in December 2025.
“We had a group that met on an ongoing basis and just brainstormed and did a lot of research on medical shelters,” Voitus says. While there were similar programs in the state – one in Cincinnati and another in Cleveland, for example – there was no such resource in the Mahoning Valley. A decision was then made to move forward with a local respite care facility with Catholic Charities as the lead agency and Mercy Health Foundation as the project’s fiscal sponsor, the first of its kind in this region. To date, the effort has raised approximately $400,000 for the Respite of Hope.
The next step was to secure a location for the new center, Voitus recalls. “That’s where Meridian HealthCare came in,” she says. “It was about a two-year process to pull all of this together.”
Meridian already operated a primary care clinic at the Donofrio Center on West Chalmers and jumped at the opportunity to become involved, says Larry Moliterno, CEO of Meridian HealthCare.
“When Catholic Charities came to us and talked about how they were working with Mercy Health and the Mercy Health Foundation to serve people being discharged who didn’t have secure housing, I said we had a facility that might be a great fit,” he says. “At the same time, we work with Catholic Charities to help them find more permanent housing. So, it just seemed like a natural partnership.”
Meridian acquired the site approximately 30 years ago, after Assumption Nursing Home relocated to Boardman, Moliterno says. The company converted a portion of the building into a primary care practice, and provides other services such as acupuncture and chiropractic medicine. These offices are expanding and being relocated to a lower floor that is directly accessible from the building’s parking lot.
“There’s always been a need for primary care in that area of the South Side,” Moliterno says. Moreover, those who are now lodged at the Respite of Hope wing of the center now have round-the-clock access to health care through Meridian, he adds.
“They’re enrolled in our primary care, where they can see chiropractors, see our physician assistants and other providers,” says Jeanne McKinna, director of medical services at the Donofrio Center. Also, any respite patients would also have access to detox or substance abuse services that Meridian offers, she says. “They can see primary care providers for all of their ailments,” she says.
HOW IT WORKS
Coincidentally, a wing of the building was not being used at the time the project came together, creating a perfect opportunity for Respite of Hope. The wing was renovated to include a new kitchen, a common room, and four bedrooms. It has the capacity to accommodate up to eight beds, says Madison Goske, case manager.
In this role, Goske performs intakes on all referrals, which are mostly from Mercy Health’s three hospitals – St. Elizabeth Youngstown and Boardman, and St. Joseph Hospital in Warren. The program will also accept referrals from other health centers in the region, she says.
“The initial referrals come to me and then I forward them to the medical team at Meridian,” she says. “Then, together we decide if it’s an appropriate referral or not.”
Once a patient is accepted, then the staff makes sure they arrive with their medication so there is no lapse in medical care, Goske says. Here, the individual is able to receive treatment from a primary care physician, mental health services, and traditional care.
“Within a few days, I’ll meet with them and do a case assessment,” she says, in order to determine the patient’s immediate needs, such as permanent housing. “We have two patients right now.”
The general length of stay at the new center is between 30 and 45 days, Goske says. The center’s first client experienced a longer stay, but the individual was able to transition to stable housing in a group home, she says. “That was a really nice success story to come out of here.”
Catholic Charities’ Voitus says many of the clients have been impacted by different circumstances. “Some suffer from substance abuse, some have mental health issues,” she says. “Some are elderly and have no family or support.”
In one case, a referral was issued for an elderly man with no family left, Voitus recounts. “The neighbors called for a welfare check, and the police brought the man to the hospital,” she says. “All his family had passed away, he had mental health issues, and his house was deemed uninhabitable. So, there was a lot of teamwork involved.”
Once the patient was released from the hospital, he was accepted in the Respite of Hope center, Voitus says. “We actually established a guardian for him to oversee his care, and then we were able to place him into a group home,” she says. “He’s now happy as a lark. As we understand, he’s stable, he’s fed, he can live his life and he’s not alone in the house.”
Voitus says the initiative is a great demonstration of how different agencies have worked together toward the common goal of establishing a first-of-its kind service to the Mahoning Valley.
“It’s a great collaboration of these different resources,” she says. “It’s a really good ongoing resource to get people housed and get them the care they need where they otherwise couldn’t get it.”
Pictured at top: Madison Goske, case manager, and Nancy Voitus, executive director of Catholic Charities Regional Agency, oversee the Respite of Hope, a center that provides services for homeless patients recovering from a hospital stay.
