Flu Shots!

When word gets out in the refugee community that our flu shots are in, we have to brace ourselves for the deluge of families who come into clinic. I'm not sure if they are so pro-vaccine because of the time they spent in the refugee camps or what, but the refugees we serve LOVE them some flu shots! Despite the hectic pace of clinic the past couple of Sundays, we still managed to fit in some time for fun. Here's a photo of me, Daw Li and Sur Gay Moo modeling some of the wigs that were recently donated to the clinic! :)

Happy Fall!

I apologize for the silence on the blog over the summer...our Sunday refugee clinic has been plugging away and continues to serve between 10 and 25 patients each Sunday afternoon.  We've seen an upswing in the number of refugees who come to the clinic solely for what we have termed "case management."  Rather than needing medical help, these individuals and their families come to the clinic for help managing and understanding bills they've received from hospital stays, dealing with problems with employers, medical and auto insurers, and apartment managers.  The Karen refugees that come to clinic are vulnerable and are often victims of scams.  As an example, one family came in for assistance on Sunday because they had received a letter from the US Treasury indicating that they were being audited based on their 2013 tax return.  As we dove deeper into the story, we discovered that they had used a fraudulent tax filing company to file their taxes.  This company charged this family more than $800.00 to file a 1040 EZ, and in all of the paperwork there is not a single indication of the name of the company or any method of reaching them.  Now we are providing assistance to this family to complete the audit requirements and help them in their communication with the IRS.  Needless to say, we do a lot of taxes for refugee families in the Spring of each year, and we always do it for free!

Citizenship

One of the most exciting things about our work with the refugee community is helping refugees navigate the process of becoming US citizens.  This is especially special when it is a friend we're helping.  This week, Pu Lue, one of our oldest and dearest refugee friends, became a US citizen.  He is so thrilled, and we share his joy in this tremendous accomplishment.

The gang's all here

We've had a steady stream of patients on Sundays for the past couple of months.  We've definitely seen an increase in the number of patients who need social work assistance--applying for charity care to take care of giant hospital bills, dealing with collections agencies, managing medicaid and CHIP applications, etc.  Yesterday, though, was special.  Several of our oldest refugee friends came to clinic.  These are the people that we met 7 years ago when we first began doing outreach to the refugee community.  These folks are the ones that opened their arms to us, welcomed us into the community, and taught us about resilience in a way that we had never understood before.  These are some great people, and we are so happy to call them our friends.

Chugging along

Sunday clinics have been SUPER BUSY the past few weeks!  Our typical hours are 2:30-6:30, but for two of the weeks in January we didn't get finished until 8:30.  The flu has hit folks pretty hard, but we've had lots of other random illnesses and complaints as well.  On the social work side of things, we've been handling lots of medical bills and hospital bills as usual, and helping to facilitate the process of applying for charity care.  One of the exciting things that we've been doing lately has been helping individuals apply for U.S. citizenship.  Refugees who have lived in the U.S. for at least 5 years and can speak, read, and write English well enough to take and pass the Citizenship exam are ready to become U.S. citizens.  This is an exciting process, and one that is wrapped up with a lot more joy than many of the other things we help people with at the clinic. Here are a few photos of some of our cutest visitors to the clinic this month!

 

And here's our sweet Ruby Nell sleeping away in the arms of a beautiful Karen mother.