Jerry Rauckhorst

Having settled in at a newly purchased central headquarters in Makiki, Catholic Charities Hawaii has launched a "Futures Campaign: Building a Bridge to Tomorrow," with a goal of raising $6.3 million over the next three years.

The effort follows a $28 million capital campaign to purchase the First Presbyterian Church’s Keeaumoku Street property seven years ago and convert it into the Clarence T.C. Ching Campus for Catholic Charities Hawaii headquarters.

This time, the goal is different. The Future Campaign "is not for bricks or mortar" but for "program expansion and innovation," said Jerry Rauckhorst, Catholic Charities’ president and chief executive.

Catholic Charities wants to increase assistance to Hawaii’s growing seniors, improve technology in the charity’s operation and make its programs more accessible.

"We’ve built a lot of momentum over the past five, six, seven years on bringing everything together here," he says, "and now what we’re doing is capitalizing on that momentum to really look at what is in the next chapter, what is on our horizon, what needs to be done."

Catholic Charities Hawaii belongs to the largest private network of social service organizations in the United States.

Rauckhorst, 64, of Hawaii Kai, followed his older brother-in-law in becoming involved in Catholic Charities at his native Akron, Ohio. He went on to work for the organization in Cleveland and served as director of Catholic Charities in Pittsburgh before being invited to head Hawaii’s operation 18 years ago.

He and his wife live in Hawaii Kai and have two adult sons, who also live in the islands.

Question: How did Catholic Charities Hawaii begin and how has it expanded over the years?

Answer: It began 66 years ago.

The four Maryknoll Sisters from New York were asked by the current bishop at that time to consider coming to Hawaii to expand social ministries of the Catholic Church.

They immediately sort of rolled up their sleeves and started to work, and at the same time they were actually organizing Catholic Charities to get it incorporated as a nonprofit organization.

They were dealing with a lot of immigration, people coming into Hawaii, especially from the Philippines and other Asian areas.

They were also doing a lot of child abuse and neglect kind of work. They were doing a lot of work in Chinatown with families that were of limited means and faced some real challenges.

They were also strong advocates, especially on behalf of the plantation workers and the folks who were really struggling to make ends meet, and yet working very long hours, so they became involved politically as well.

As our mission has evolved, so many people think of Catholic Charities as an agency that offers many, many different programs and services, and, yes, we do. We have over 30 programs and services, but another very important dimension to our mission is something we refer to as advocacy, and that really started back with the Maryknoll Sisters, because they were not just interested in meeting the needs of the people who were disadvantaged, but they were also interested in finding out why are they in these situations and what needs to be changed to help them improve the quality of their lives.

When I came here, it was like, you know, we’ve got to do something to try to pull this organization together so that it’s one entity, with one governing board, a lot of volunteer leadership support, but we really needed to create … efficiencies. So coming to this Catholic Charities campus was a major step in being able to do that. …

It probably took us three years to find this location … As soon as our staff came here for the first time, it was like, wow, this is so much more conducive to our mission and to the kind of culture and climate we try to create, so it worked out very well.

Q: In the Futures Campaign, can you tell us about the program for seniors?

A: We’ve always been strong in senior programs at Catholic Charities Hawaii.

We’ve done a housing assistance program for seniors who are vulnerable to losing their own homes and ending up homeless.

We have a fleet of vans that take seniors to doctor appointments and seniors to shopping and that kind of thing.

We’ve done a lot of in-home services over the years, whether it be chore assistance, or just helping out seniors.

The entire goal of our senior program is to keep seniors independent for as long as possible.

Q: How has that been affected by baby boomers reaching that age?

A: Pretty significantly.

I think the latest statistic is that by 2020 there’s going to be a 200 percent increase in the number of seniors in Hawaii, which is going to basically translate to one out of every four people is going to be a senior citizen who’s living here. That’s why we think that as part of the Futures Campaign, we’ve really got to be able to ramp up the services to seniors, because there are going to be so many more demands. …

From my standpoint, they really need the support to remain in their homes. The majority of seniors don’t want to be institutionalized. They need supports in their homes, whether it’s chore assistance, whether it’s some friendly visitation …

A lot of them are homebound. They need those kinds of assistance supports and, in addition to that, they need help in wellness kinds of activities to be able to keep them strong, healthy and independent.

For instance, we have the Lanakila Multi-Purpose Senior Center, (where) we have a very vibrant program for seniors. There’s a lot of exercise programs, there are ethnic clubs, actually, and we have a lot of active involvement in that. So we’re thinking about, in terms of the future, being able to expand on what we have at Lanakila.

That’s a facility, that’s a center. You have to go there for it. What we hope to be able to do is take a lot of that programming out into the communities and be able to utilize other facilities, whether they be community centers, churches, school facilities.

If you go out to Kahala Mall on certain days of the week, you will find exercise programs going on in that common area, because organizations are beginning to utilize spaces like that where seniors gather.

The other area that I think is very important is something that we call case management. Basically, what that translates to is somebody who has an understanding of the senior, oftentimes the caregiver, what the needs are of both, and can help the caregiver and the senior sort of navigate through the system so that they are able to get the kind of resources that they need in order to create the kind of supports that are necessary to keep them independent for as long as possible.

Q: Another program that’s part of Futures Campaign is expanding technology. What does that involve?

A: We feel that technology will give us a real opportunity to be able to serve people more effectively. A lot of our work is done in peoples’ homes.

We have another program where we actually go into the hospitals where children are being born, and we do an assessment regarding child abuse and neglect.

Right after a child is born, we have an assessment instrument that we use — this is all a part of a state contract we have. Right now people are jotting down notes on notebooks and yellow pads on that kind of thing.

We feel that with the use, for instance, of a tablet, whether it be an iPad or whatever it might be, the reality is all of the notes can be taken right there.

They can easily be transmitted to a server — which is our private server at Catholic Charities Hawaii, so we don’t have any issues there with confidentiality — and at the same time forms can even be put right on these tablets so that individuals can sign off on the kind of forms they need to sign.

You’re covering all of those steps at one time. It’s all done by tablets and servers you can communicate with so that you can aggregate all of that information.

Now a worker would have to come back to the office and would then have to input all of that into a computer and it then would all have to be aggregated, that sort of thing.

Now it’s going to be able to be done virtually on the spot. We’re very excited about that possibility and, of course, our staff is very excited about that possibility, too, because we feel that a staff person who’s doing some of these types of services is probably going to be able see two extra people a day just because of having that convenience of being able to do all of that work and don’t have to come back to the office and do it that way.

Q: Another part of the plan is to make programs more accessible. What does that involve?

A: There is huge need on the Leeward coast, there’s significant need in Central Oahu, we need to be more on the Windward side of Oahu, plus we are statewide so we have offices on the neighbor islands as well.

What we’re challenged with is making some of our programs more accessible to the areas that are not in the mainstream of downtown Honolulu. So we’re basically thinking strategically, what’s that going to mean.

We can’t replicate what we have here everywhere. That’s not the goal. But the idea is that, depending on the community, we basically package services that are integrated with other community services so that there’s a real collaborated effort. …

Our first step in that process is to move more toward leeward. So we’re in the process right now of finalizing a location that’s going to be in Waipahu.