Above: Sister Theresa Marie Elitz and Amanecer hope to create a “new dawn” for Hispanic clients in need. Photo provided.
By Adriana Camacho-Church
In 2003, Franciscan Sister Theresa Marie Elitz of Philadelphia found herself in need of extra cash, so she decorated a shoebox and put it on her desk.
“People were very generous, especially before 2008 when we had the recession,” she says.
That year, Father Chris Posch asked her if she would like to work in St. Paul’s parish in Wilmington.
“What he did not tell me was that the people of the parish were very poor, and my ministry would have to be self-supporting,” she says.
Between the shoebox and learning how to write grants, Sister Theresa sustained an outreach program she founded at the church and hired another person to help her run it.
“We very quickly had a waiting list,” she adds.
In need of more room, in 2021 she moved the Family Counseling Center of St. Paul’s to a new location outside the parish and called it Amanecer Counseling and Resource Center (ACRC).
“Amanecer signifies a new dawn which we hope for all our clients,” says Sister Theresa, who at age 81 sees clients and supervises all the clinicians and interns eligible for a master’s degree.
Located in Wilmington, the nonprofit provides bilingual and culturally responsive mental health services and therapy to economically challenged children, teens, and adults in Delaware suffering from physical, sexual, and mental abuse as well as issues such as grief, anxiety, and depression. ACRC’s client-base is 83% Hispanic.
ACRC provides referrals, case management, legal services, and partners with other physicians, schools, police victim service providers, and agencies statewide to help empower their clients as well as foster inclusivity and stronger communities. It also offers internship hours to undergraduate and graduate students as well as recruits, trains, supervises, and hires graduates with master’s degrees.
Clients learn about ACRC through word of mouth or referrals. They make appointments either in person or via telehealth.
Sister Theresa Marie Elitz. Photo provided.
“Amanecer is the only bilingual, culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and evidence-based behavioral health services organization collectively providing these services in Delaware,” says Executive Director Rob McCreary. “In 2024, our team served nearly 600 at-risk, underserved communities disproportionately impacted by mental health disparities and associated social determinants of health, such as shelter and food insecurity.”
ACRC recognizes the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity in mental health care, adds McCreary. “Minority communities often face barriers to access and quality care. By offering culturally responsive services, we work to reduce these disparities and honor each person’s unique background.”
Culturally responsive care means healthcare that acknowledges and respects a patient’s cultural traditions, says Ana Ramirez-Irineo, the victim services therapist at Amanecer. It promotes and improves health outcomes, fostering trust and rapport between health care provider and patient.
“My clients come to therapy with a lot of pain, fear, doubt, and anger. Trust, support, and community are very important components to healing for some clients,” says Ramirez-Irineo. “Cultural competence to me is the capacity to understand and explore one’s own cultural context as it relates to others. As clinicians, we come with our own cultural contexts, biases, and beliefs that can influence how we assess, interpret, understand, and relate to our clients.”
Ramirez-Irineo is one of six therapists at ACRC whose skills address a need for more bilingual and culturally responsive service providers in the state. According to ACRC, Delaware has only 43 bilingual behavioral health providers and there are nearly 100,000 Hispanics in the state.
ACRC’s unique approach to providing bilingual and culturally responsive healthcare, stems from Sister Theresa’s years of experience working as a nurse. Her missions took her throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Central America.
When she joined the Order of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia in 1964, her first mission was at St. Agnes Hospital in South Philadelphia, located in an Italian neighborhood.
“I would ask the patients how they were, and they would answer me in Italian,” she says. “I made up my mind right then and there if I ever got stationed in another hospital where they spoke a different language other than English, I would start to learn it from day one, so that is what I did. My next mission was St. Mary’s Hospital in North Philadelphia in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood.”
In 1999, she earned her second master’s degree, but this time in behavioral health counseling.
“Nursing is physically wearing, especially after I had done it for 30 years,” she says. “Turning my attention to the mentally ill was a way of continuing the healing ministry.”
According to data made available in March by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), more than 220,000 people in Delaware live in a community without enough mental health professionals and 1 in 5 adults experience a mental illness each year. NAMI also reports that 15,000 Delaware adolescents experience a major depressive episode each year and 165,000 adults in Delaware have a mental health condition. Additionally, 1 in 12 homeless people in Delaware have a serious mental illness.
In June, ACRC and Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington partnered through the hospital’s Healthy Village initiative. The initiative aims to integrate health and social services to clients and community members with the goal of improving quality of life and enhancing communities.
— For more about ACRC, visit Amanecerde.org
