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!