Unprecedented. Extraordinary. Unparalleled.These are the words often used to describe this pandemic and the impact it has had on our agency and our employees. It’s a truly once-in-a-lifetime situation. But we have risen to the occasion.
And we’ve done it in large part because of the strong support we receive from this community:
- United Way of Greater Cincinnati provided $100,000 in gift cards for us to distribute to people struggling financially because of COVID-19;
- The Hamilton County Auditor’s office assisted us in the distribution of nearly 6,000 $500 checks to eligible families through our emergency PRC Program. These were some of the first emergency relief dollars distributed to hurting families in our community.
- Cincinnati Public Schools and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center are helping produce flyers with important messages about parenting, mental health and child abuse prevention;
- The Ohio Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families partnered with the Hamilton County Fatherhood Collaborative to help dads deal with homeschooling and other issues, and held a Zoom hangout where 100 dads found support;
- We expressed a need for – and then promptly received – community donations, including:
- Hand sanitizer from Northern Row Brewery, for our social workers who continue to go into the field;
- Face coverings from local seamstresses (including Delhi Township Trustee Rose Stertz);
- iPads and laptops for children in foster care to finish school work on.
Thank you to everyone who helped bring about these collaborative efforts. As I’ve been telling our employees – we continue to be a rock for this community and what you are doing, every day, makes a difference people recognize. We have been Supporting Families and Changing Lives for 75 years.
But not without a lot of support from you. Thank you.
There’s another phrase we’ve all been using lately – “new normal.” As we continue to work our way through this pandemic and its aftermath, I look forward to all the new ways we can collaborate with our community. That’s the new normal.
