98: John Knockstead
Social Worker, Reading Housing Authority
Jack Knockstead is a social worker with the Reading Housing Authority. He works about 45 hours a week providing assistance to residents of the 1610 public housing units, helping them manage different aspects of their lives so they can remain in their homes, and connecting them any other services within the community that they might need. When the pandemic began, Jack’s team all moved to a work from home setup. The maintenance team continued to provide their services on site, but Jack’s team needed to reconsider how they could best serve the residents and make sure they were all safe. Luckily, they were able to rely on a number of Alvernia University nursing student volunteers to do virtual and in-person wellness checks on residents as needed. They also started implementing a food delivery system, in conjunction with Helping Harvest, Meals on Wheels, and Centro Hispano, for their residents who were unable to leave their homes. More recently, they have been working to ensure that all of their residents have easy access to a vaccination appointment. Even in the face of everything they have been doing to keep residents safe, Jack knows of well over a hundred people at the Housing Authorities properties who contracted covid. Several of them, unfortunately passed away, which was so heartbreaking to see, especially when they were younger people. He wonders often if there was anything else they could have done.
Jack lives with his wife and his two adult children. His daughter just graduated from Temple and his son moved back home from the Philadelphia area during the pandemic. All of them worked through the shutdown as well. He feels very lucky to have had both of his children home and to have his family close and in contact during a time when so many families were separated. That contact was one of the things that helped him to get through that stressful time. One thing that will always stick with Jack is a conversation he had with his sister, who is an x-ray technician. She told him that the worst part of working in a hospital during the pandemic was seeing families drop off their loved ones to receive care and then never seeing them alive again. That is always what his mind returns to when he thinks of the worst of the pandemic. But there were good moments he returns too as well. They were able to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday, even in the midst of all the struggle. He also helped out at some vaccination sites and will always remember the gratitude and kindness of the people getting shots. He wishes that people could be so wonderful all of the time as they were then.
The pandemic has certainly had a lasting effect on Jack. He has cultivated a much deeper appreciation for what is in front of him. He hopes that, in the future, people could continue to display the kindness and courtesy he has seen all throughout the pandemic.
