The doors to our facility are closed – but our staff are still working with children and families every day.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind with school closures, the first COVID-19 cases in Linn and Benton counties, and many changes to our daily lives. In my role as Executive Director, I have had many meetings with staff to navigate the changes and their impact on the children and families we serve, and on our staff and their families. We are also thinking of those in the community we work with daily, and those on the front line of the response and hope they are all staying safe, supported and healthy.
We are planning for changes in response to the financial impact of the pandemic but in the short term our focus has been to make changes to the way we deliver services. The needs of some of our families are higher than ever as they face unemployment and reduced incomes, lack of childcare, needing to manage home and school schedules while balancing that with their work; and, navigating the emotional toll of the current situation.
I am proud to say that our staff have rallied around families, embraced new ways of connecting with them like telemedicine via phone and/or internet-based tools, and working from newly set up home offices. In the background, our IT staff and managers have worked to put all the technology and tools together for HIPAA compliance, found and implemented training so that we do this all well and supported their teams through the changes.
Information is changing so fast these days that we spend significant time understanding and sharing quality information with the families we serve, our staff and the community. We are grateful that we have so many wonderful partners in our area.
Thank you to everyone in our community for doing your part in hopefully keeping everyone safe and supported as best we can. We are in this for the long run. Please take care of yourselves in this uncertain time.
Bettina Schempf, Executive Director
March 25, 2020
