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An Interview with Family Voices Indiana FSSA's SECC Charity of Choice
FSSA recently sat down with Holly Wheeler, director of Family Voices Indiana, to gain a better understanding of how pledges made through the SECC can impact a nonprofit and learn a little bit more about FSSA’s SECC charity of choice, Family Voices Indiana. We also talked about how Family Voices Indiana and FSSA have worked together over the years to provide information and connect families and individuals with appropriate services.
Holly, could you please explain some of the work the Family Voices Indiana does around the state?
Family Voices Indiana is a unique family-led organization that provides information, education, training, outreach and peer support to families of children and youth with special health care needs and the professionals who serve them across Indiana. We have served as the Indiana Family-to-Family Health Information Center since 2011 and are recognized as the go-to resource for timely and accurate information to support all levels of decision-making that impacts children with special health care needs and their families.
All of our staff and the majority of our board members are parents/family members of children and youth with special health care needs. Through their personal experiences of caring for a child with special needs, families develop invaluable expertise. Staff live and work in their home communities across Indiana and help raise awareness of resources and programs at the local level. They also act as a conduit by which families learn from one another to ease the complexity of navigating supports and services. This leads to families’ ability to make more informed choices about care, resulting in better outcomes for their children.
Family Voices Indiana also offers training to families and providers in multiple formats and we host an annual conference for families to explore issues pertinent to them in depth and an opportunity for information sharing and networking.
How will the funds raised through the SECC help Family Voices Indiana?
Funds raised through the SECC for Family Voices Indiana will be used to sustain and expand our support to families in communities throughout Indiana. This work is primary to what we do as a family-to-family organization. Included is funding for our health information specialists who engage directly with families, our electronic network of support and training and our fact sheets. These are three pillars of our support to families at the local level and integral to fulfilling our mission.
Are there other ways people might be able to support Family Voices Indiana if they may not be in a position to give at the moment?
There are certainly other ways to support Family Voices Indiana. One way is to engage with us on social media, including Facebook and Twitter. You also could subscribe to our newsletter and blog. If you’re interested in volunteering, you can contact me at holly@fvindiana.org and we can discuss options. We always are looking for volunteers to help us work at community events and to plan and staff our annual conference.
Can you share a success story how services provided by your team and FSSA may have overlapped?
I can actually share a couple.
Family Voices Indiana was contacted by a family of a young man with autism and developmental disabilities, age 18, whose father had recently died. Social Security began paying survivor benefits to the young man, which jeopardized his Medicaid waiver eligibility. Working with FSSA, we were able to assist the family in setting up a special needs trust in order to preserve the young man's benefits and waiver services.
We also helped to ensure a young Burmese refugee received her medication in a timely manner.