When responsibilities interfere
Ida is currently living at her mother’s house. Ida’s mother had surgery and is requiring care to recuperate, so Ida is currently caring for her mother as well as her daughter. Due to this, Ida has been unable to obtain external employment. She struggles with how to provide for her family. Her daughter’s physician contacted the Alliance. Working Working with a Community Health Worker, Ida was able receive job resources for a possible remote position which would allow her to care for her mother and child. She was also connect to food resources in her community and is now able to provide healthy and balanced meals for her family.
Caught in the GAPS
Pat is a 38 year old patient who has been engaged with the Alliance for Community Health since February 2023. The astounding factor of this story is that the patient’s mother, who is in her 70s and struggles with her own medical and social needs, is the sole caretaker. She advocates for her son in ways that only a mother can. Pat has been immobile and diagnosed as paraplegic for approximately 10 years after a devastating gunshot wound to the head. The family lives in an EXTREMELY remote location and was fortunate enough to get an accessible home built by Habitat for Humanity. That being said, the patient has been sleeping on an Emergency Room style gurney for the past 10 years. As you can imagine, a gurney with no electrical support is physically straining and laborious for his mother. She is left to manually to lift, assist, and move the patient. After what seemed like endless attempts through Medicare, Medicaid, community resources, and lots of cold calls, the AFCH staff was able to secure a fully electric bed for the patient. Not only did the staff facilitate the donation of this bed, they were able to allocate grant funds for the bed to be delivered to the patient’s home. Now both the patient and his mother are in better health due to less stress and better positioning. This story is an example of the work that the staff of the AFCH does on a daily basis, all for the benefit of our patients and their families.
Entire families.
For many of the families, we have helped, more than one member needed assisted. For some families, more than one individual was facing substance abuse. Many families have had both parents and adult children facing homelessness and needing rental assistance. Please remember that we can help anyone if they are in need of community assistance.