A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

to individuals, families, and communities – from housing and transportation, to employment supports, to early childhood development and education, to behavioral health services, to supports that help strengthen families and assure children are safe and well. Freedom County’s human services ecosystem works to ensure that all of the County’s residents have access to the tools necessary to achieve health, well‑being, and prosperity. Mrs. Williams on DeKalb Street, for instance, relies on one of the local human services CBOs. She’s 91 and has lived alone, in the same house that she and her late husband bought in 1957, since her son moved to Chicago three years ago. Mrs. Williams can’t handle stairs very well any more – she hasn’t seen the second floor of her house for a while – and also finds it increasingly hard to get to the grocery store. When her son first moved away, she felt a terrible cloud of depression settle over her. Now she says, “I couldn’t do anything but sit on my couch and watch the sunlight on the walls,” but at the time, she didn’t tell a soul how she felt. She didn’t want to worry her son when he was starting his new job. She stopped eating properly and started feeling weaker. When she stopped answering her phone, her son felt he had no choice but to call 911. Mrs. Williams ended up in the emergency room, dehydrated, and then in the hospital for three days. Two months later she had a similar incident – this time she missed a trip to the store, stretched her groceries, and ended up back in the hospital for a week with low blood sodium. Medicare covered the bill, but her two hospital stays ended up costing almost $50,000.

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