Community Outreach Expands Thanks to Private Funding

The Community Support Team is growing! Thanks to the generosity of the Liberty Mutual Foundation, the Cummings Foundation, and individual donors, three social-work interns have joined the Library’s full-time social worker, Taylor Morris, in assisting patrons in search of information on housing, mental-health resources, and other social services.

The three interns are all graduate students (Boston College and Simmons University) pursuing their master’s degree in social work and are available at the Central Library and the West End, Codman Square, and Roxbury branches. “The team of interns enables us to expand our services to branches,” said Taylor. “They’re doing primarily patron-facing work and I expect that having them here will increase the number of patrons we’re able to serve.”

In addition to the increase in staffing, the Community Support Team desk on the mezzanine level of the Central Library now provides patrons with resources to support their basic needs, such as socks, hats, gloves, hand warmers, bus passes, snacks, water, and personal-care items.