“In 2015 I began my work as Faith Community Health Nurse with Atrium working at Norwood First UMC.

One of my first parishioners that I visited was a mother/daughter pair. The mother had cared for her daughter since she was nine years old because she was a paraplegic and unable to walk. This was due to a brain tumor at the age of nine, and radiation and surgery had left her without use of her legs. The mother transported her to and from the wheelchair day after day, several times per day. The most urgent need was a wheelchair which I arranged for her to receive. It was lighter weight for the mother to not have to strain her back so badly with transfers. At the time I began working with them, the daughter had a cognitive level of a nine to ten year old but physically was thirty-two. They moved to Norwood from Michigan, and the mother explained to me that they had a brother/sister program up there that had helped them so much. Someone came & took the daughter to a movie or bowling which gave the mother some respite time and gave the daughter socialization with others her age. I immediately started working on trying to get someone or someplace to take them to achieve these goals for each of them. I first called Becky Weemhoff at the Senior Center, who said she was so sorry but everything she knew of was for sixty and over which would not benefit the daughter at all. I called Cardinal Innovations all the way up in Raleigh with no success! Another big problem was that the daughter was on Medicare instead of Medicaid. When I was asking a facility about helping them and they found out they were on Medicare, they immediately hung up on me!

The daughter died last January at the age of forty, and the mother now has many back and leg problems and uses a walker. This is from the many years of providing care for her handicapped daughter confined to a wheelchair. They literally “fell through the cracks” and were unable to get any help in this county or surrounding counties! Myself and some others in the church would go and visit with the daughter or take her on an outing so that the mother could have a little respite care but it was not regularly done. Sometimes the mother would ask me to come over and just stay with her daughter and play games or entertain her so that she could take a relaxing bath.

The bottom line here is that this family struggled and were not able to receive any care that both of them desperately needed in this county. The great advantage of this new Day Care Facility is that it will take anyone from eighteen and older. There may be head injury victims or others with paralysis that need daily caregivers and the caregivers need respite! This facility would allow the handicapped individuals to come to the facility from 7 am until 6 pm for five days a week and the caregivers could get rest or socialization with others that they need.

Another advantage of this facility is that even if the person does not have Medicaid there will be other options for the care to be covered such as with an endowment.

This facility is desperately needed to serve these counties because there are the elderly with problems of aging, but there are also others in our community with handicapping conditions that require someone to care for them 24/7. Both caregivers and participants desperately need socialization with others, and the caregiver needs to have some down time to be able to fill their emotional cup so that they can adequately give the care to their loved one that they need.

Through your financial help and support we in Stanly County can have a facility that can provide opportunities for socialization, physical, and mental care for the handicapped and respite care for the caregivers as their loved ones are being cared for in this day care facility.” – Sarah Lee, Community Health Nurse