Help with medication and food for family

St John’s Care has been providing emergency relief for 28 years and we will continue to do so. You may have seen the statistics we posted on Facebook last week. There continues to be a huge need for our service e.g. over the last 6 months we gave 4215 food hampers to people in need.

Working in conjunction with Anglicare we continue to explore not only how we might assist our clients to survive, but how we might help them thrive.

In most cases, people come to us asking for food, clothing or assistance with paying a bill, which we gladly provide depending on the level of donations we receive.

Occasionally, clients invite us into their lives by sharing their stories and the circumstances that bring them to our door to ask for help.

For some of these clients we are able to provide more than just emergency relief. We can provide them with advocacy as well. A recent example is that of a woman who has received emergency food relief from SJC on several occasions.

Jess (not her real name) is a single mother with three children. Her youngest daughter suffers from a debilitating illness and is constantly in and out of hospital receiving treatment. As Jess has no family in Canberra, she is very reliant on her friends to look after her two other children when she is at the hospital.

Until recently, Jess had a good job and was trying very hard to keep the ‘wolf from the door’. However, she lost her job because of the amount of time she had to spend at the hospital. As a consequence, Jess has no money while she waits for Centrelink payments to kick in.

Our Community Worker, Steph, contacted Centrelink on Jess’s behalf as she said that she was at rock bottom and couldn’t deal with the ‘fight’! They agreed to pay Jess an emergency payment so that she had some money to get by until she received her regular payment.

Jess also struggles with paying for all her daughter’s medication. We contacted Jess’s doctor to find out if she is eligible for discounted prescriptions which, it transpired, she was. Jess was so grateful for this advocacy help and the food we gave her. She said that she could now look at moving forward and dealing with the loss of her job and her daughter’s health.

St John’s Care regularly helps and supports people like Jess; but none of this could be achieved without all the amazing donations we receive from the community.

Thank you to everyone who has donated over the past financial year. It is very much appreciated. We couldn’t do what we do without your help.

Items required: Pasta meals, tinned fruit, Up and Go, biscuits and peanut butter.

Kind regards,

The SJC team