In addition to the approximately $5 million a year Meridian provides in charity care to those who could not afford it, we are using your gifts to make our programs and services impact our community. Here are just a few examples:
Wheeling for Healing
Our “Wheeling for Healing” program equips our Behavioral Clinicians with mobile therapeutic tool kits. Our children’s services programs reached over 5,500 children and their families last year. The kit is an easily transportable suitcase on wheels and is filled with therapeutic tools, skill building exercises, and parental training materials.
FosterHope
Over 6,000 children are in Indiana’s foster care system, and Meridian is attempting to put a dent in that number by giving incentives for interested parents to complete foster parent training.
Our FosterHope gift packs reward parents with additional training books, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, and other expensve requirements that enable families to finish training.
Fewer barriers mean more kids in caring homes.
Welcome Home
While a permanent place to stay might seem like a gift to a homeless person, can you imagine being placed in a new apartment without towels, toiletries, blankets, or silverware? We can’t either. That’s why Meridian provides “Welcome Home” baskets with all of these items and more to make the transition to stability less stressful and likely to be more successful.
Child Advocacy Center
1 in 8 children by the age of 18 will experience some form of abuse. The only statistic more frightening is that only 25% of the victims who come forward will ever see their cases go to court.
That’s just wrong.
With your help, new state-of-the-art video equipment is being provided to our Child Advocacy Center, enabling interviews to be recorded digitally so that victims do not need to recount their horrors in an interrogation room at the police station multiple times to multiple audiences.
Women’s Health
A new 3D ultrasound machine was needed to provide expectant mothers with valuable information on the newest member of the family. Donor gifts also purchased an EKG machine, cholesterol analyzer, fetal stress test monitor, and Doppler late fetal heart monitor to enhance our abilities to serve expectant mothers.
Gresham Center for Children and Families
We are providing new supplies to our Art Therapy room and enhancing the Gresham Garden where children and families work together as part of therapy to help grow fresh produce and flowers! In addition, we are purchasing furniture to enhance therapies provided to children in therapy and new recreation equipment to help in the development of positive interaction through therapeutic relationships.
