Local resale shop aims to employ those with mental illnesses

Oxford’s Holding Hands Resale Shop has continued to serve the community despite the challenges of the pandemic. Holding Hands employs people with mental illnesses and disabilities, striving to provide opportunities for those in need. This is something that founder Donna Howard saw a need for in her community since the shop’s inception.

Howard started the store for her daughter Cassie, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in her teens. Cassie has had several jobs throughout her life, but she was never happy because she felt like she was treated differently because of stigmas surrounding her mental illness. After visiting a thrift store in Nashville with a similar model for people with physical disabilities, Howard decided to open her own store.

“Donna had always had the dream of (Cassie) having a job where she could feel good about herself,” Julia Williams, the Holding Hands community outreach coordinator, said.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 86% of people in Mississippi receiving public mental health benefits were unemployed in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available. Research published in 2010 in Psychiatric Services found that rates of employment also decreased as the severity of the mental illness increased.

Holding Hands Resale Shop has employed people with mental illnesses and disabilities since its founding in 2013.

Williams said that the mission of Holding Hands is to give its employees a safe place to work where they are comfortable and can succeed while feeling good about themselves.

At the start of the pandemic, Holding Hands had to close its doors for six weeks. However, this didn’t stop people from donating. Williams said that there were piles of items in front of the store nearly every morning because being stuck at home meant people were cleaning and donating more than usual.

When the store did reopen, it had more business than ever before because so many more people were having financial difficulties and looking to shop at thrift stores. Williams also said that the Goodwill and Salvation Army weren’t open for a while, which increased her store’s foot traffic and visibility in the community.

The store currently employs 12-15 people with mental illnesses. The store also partners with a number of other local nonprofits who will sometimes recommend employees to them. Most of the store’s employees receive disability benefits, but working with Holding Hands gives them something to normalize their schedule, Williams said.

A unique aspect of Holding Hands’s model, Williams said, is the store’s flexibility with the skill levels of various employees. Whether they run the cash register, sort and hang clothes, move furniture or drive the moving truck used for pick-ups, the store strives to find a place that matches their abilities.

“We take them where they are,” Williams said. “We also work with the understanding that there are days where medication may be off or someone may be having a worse day with their illness, and we work with those struggles as well.”

The store partners with other local organizations, including Interfaith Compassion Ministries, Doors of Hope, United Way, Red Cross and Communicare, to provide clothing to clients of those organizations for free. When asked to summarize her Holding Hands experience, Williams said she believes they are successful.

Mellisa Hart, assistant store manager, plans to open her own thrift store following the Holding Hands model, which would employ mentally and physically disabled people in Tupelo. She thinks her current position with Holding Hands is helping prepare her to achieve this goal, including learning how to cater to each employee’s weaknesses and strengths.

“I’ve been a retail manager for 20 years always working for corporations and this is an organization that actually cares about its employees,” Hart said.