New Haven Independent

Aranjo (pictured) sat in a chair in the corner of a big reception room at 48 Howe St. Monday as dozens of staffers and other supporters of ALSO-Cornerstone and The Connection celebrated the merger of the two groups.

For the past four decades, they both have provided supportive housing and other services to clients with addictions and mental illness. ALSO-Cornerstone is particularly well regarded for its mental health programs. The Connection, a statewide organization, also runs a homeless shelter, a foster care program, and alternative to incarceration and prison re-entry programs.

Aranjo said ALSO-Cornerstone (which itself resulted from a merger of two New Haven service providers in 2001) helped him find supportive housing, an efficiency unit at West Village Apartments on the corner of Howe and Chapel streets. It provides him counseling and other supports. He’s taking medication for depression and stress. He has a New Year’s resolution to change all that. “I’m trying to get into a fitness center and Weight Watchers,” he said, cognizant that getting fit and losing weight would help with his heart problem and maybe with his depression, too. “They help me with all of that,” he added.

Peter Nucci (pictured), is the president and CEO of The Connection and now of the merged entity, which will be called The Connection. He spoke to a crowd Monday that included politicians, funders and well-wishers from other social service organizations in a venue that houses several of its programs. He outlined how the merger will join the two agencies that do similar work, and also how the work of one complements the work of the other.

“Both organizations are what I would call social entrepreneurs,” he said. “Social entrepreneurs to me are people who see the opportunity, in this case, to make sure nobody slips through the gaps.” Nucci said the merged agency will provide services to 6,000 clients statewide, about 2,000 of them in New Haven and six surrounding towns.

State Sen. Toni Harp (pictured, with The Connection’s communications director, Heide Erb, in the background) said the merger will provide “wrap-around services” for clients.

Later, ALSO-Cornerstone’s communications director (and now associate communications director under the merger) Claire Bien explained, “New Haven tries to have a ‘no wrong door’ policy. This [merger] will make it that much easier for clients in New Haven to get the services they need.”

Turf battles are as much a part of the social service world as of any other sector of society, said Barbara Geller, director of statewide services for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (pictured with former State Rep. and current Connection board member Bill Dyson). “What’s interesting here,” Geller said, “is that you have two very good agencies, both of which provided excellent services in the community, and they weren’t afraid to say, ‘Let’s see how we do this better together.’ My hope is that the staffs will learn from each other. But at the same time there are budgetary efficiencies we need to care about right now, because there is not now — nor will there be in the foreseeable future — money to fund everybody at the level they need to be funded. So this is good news — good news for the state and for New Haven.”