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A Long and Winding Road

Every little bit helps. We can keep an entire household off the streets by making a few rent payments. We can keep another household warm in winter by paying their utility bills. Even a single, emergency meal keeps a child active and engaged at home and school that day. That’s why we cherish your donations, no matter the size.

But sometimes households have complex problems, and staff need to work long and hard to make a deep and lasting difference. Our Healthy Family home visiting program takes the long view when working with families. We offer services supporting families with newborns that can last until the child is three years old. A family support specialist meets weekly with families, offering advice and support to enhance child health and development, child safety, mom’s self-care, and family well-being.

Charles and Becky Meyers recently needed significant support from our program to get their lives back on track. Their twins Hallie and Zach were born prematurely, and had to receive intensive care in Portland for several months. Hallie had serious heart defects, and eventually needed open-heart surgery. Thankfully she recovered. In those initial months, the support specialist worked with the Meyers, helping them seek SNAP, TANF and SSI supports while connecting them with mental health, early intervention and many other services.

Tragically, when the Meyers were making arrangements to come back home to Douglas County, the friend they were living with committed suicide. The Meyers were now homeless. We were able to connect the Meyers to our Housing Stabilization Services program, where they obtained a voucher to live in a motel. While the voucher helped, the Meyers had to move nine times using the voucher to stay off of the streets.

But during this time, with the help and support of many, they took giant steps forward. They reconnected with Becky’s family. Charles was able to get a full-time job. Both children were released from health restrictions. Now, they are finally moving into their own new home, a two-bedroom duplex. Throughout, our staff not only provided a wealth of support and services, they were a constant source of care and comfort. We are so happy to see the Meyers moving on with their lives.

Newsletters

Shaun Pritchard
Newsletters

Letter from the Executive Director – Fall 2023

Non-profit newsletters, including our own, often feature stories about their successes. Though my staff do an incredible job day in and day out serving hundreds of clients, staff alone cannot guarantee that clients will succeed. It takes a team, including not only staff, but also community partners and clients themselves, to successfully move past challenging issues. You can learn more here about how we all work together to change lives and improve our community.

Anne Kubisch
Newsletters

Beloved Community Member Retiring

UCAN regularly receives support from many wonderful local foundations and advised funds. But perhaps no other single foundation has had a greater impact on the programming we are able to offer than The Ford Family Foundation (TFFF). With their President and Chief Executive Officer Anne Kubisch retiring, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank both her and the Foundation for their support of our work in Douglas County. You can learn more about Anne and her wonderful support for rural Oregon here.

Working Together on the Road to Recovery
Newsletters

Working Together on the Road to Recovery

Oftentimes we have clients who just need a little help to get back on track. Maybe they need a utility bill paid for a couple of months. Sometimes though, folks need the benefit of many of our services before their lives are stable. The following story is about such a client, how we were able to help her with several UCAN services, and how she herself put in a lot of hard work to get her life back on track. Read about her terrific story of recovery here.