Since 1955, when the Little Sisters of the Assumption started Pernet Family Health Service in Worcester, our organization has strengthened vulnerable, low income families with emergency assistance, maternal and child home health care, and family support. Our roots date back to 1865 and the wake of the Industrial Revolution, when Father Etienne Pernet, for whom we are named, and Sister Antoinette Fage, founded the Little Sisters of the Assumption to provide home-based nursing, child care, and homemaker help to overburdened factory workers in Paris, France. Their care lifted struggling families both physically and spiritually, laying the foundation for what is now a thriving global network of health and social service agencies. Today, Pernet Family Health Service in Worcester, Massachusetts is a Department of Public Health-certified home health agency, providing hands-on, in-home care for the most complex of maternal and child cases in the Worcester area, and early intervention services for children with, or at-risk for, developmental delays. We also collaborate with many governmental, nonprofit, and spiritual organizations to improve the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual health of 11,500 impoverished people a year, many of them infants and children. Every day our nurses, social workers, volunteers, staff and leadership team work to renew the whole person - physically, socially, and spiritually - in communities that lift each other up. Our mission, which supports the physical, social, psychological, and spiritual development of men, women, children, and families, resonates with that of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Here at Pernet, where we view society as one large family, we work to promote social justice and human rights for all people, gradually improving society - one person, one family, one community at a time.
