Churches organize many worthwhile ministries, but they rarely organize to meet the needs of caregivers. This is a relatively new concept for most churches, including Baptists.
“It just hasn’t dawned on them that this need exists,” said David Freeman, pastor of Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, Huntsville, which has a ministry to caregivers of special needs children. This ministry is known as Care for Caregivers (CFC).
According to Freeman, few Baptist churches in Alabama have respite care ministries for caregivers. Weatherly Heights is the only church of any denomination in Huntsville with this type of ministry, although a few others are considering it.
Freeman began CFC last year when he arrived as the pastor. Seventy volunteers from the church are now trained to implement this ministry. They rotate as teams to give respite care to caregivers who bring their special needs children to the church for care from 6–10 p.m. on the first Friday of each month. The special needs children and their able siblings are brought to the church and a team of these trained volunteers take care of them.
“I hope this will truly provide a respite — a time of relief and release — to the parents of children with special needs,” Freeman said.
This gives caregivers, who are usually the parents of children with special needs or disabilities, a Friday night off from what is oftentimes constant-care situations.
“From 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. these caregivers are free to do whatever they wish,” Freeman said.
He hopes to see an ecumenical approach that would allow several churches in any given community to bear the responsibility of, say one Friday night a month. If four or five churches each did a Friday night, caregivers could have an entire month of Friday nights off, knowing that their loved ones were receiving quality care.
Ultimately, the church plans to expand the ministry to include caregivers who care for adults who have Alzheimer’s disease or are disabled due to other illnesses or accidents.
Among the 20 or so special needs children who currently attend on these Fridays are children with several disabilities.
“We have a variety of disabilities that are represented — intractable seizures, undiagnosed retardation, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy — from the mildly affected to the profoundly affected,” Freeman said.
The few Baptist churches in Alabama that have specific ministries to caregivers usually have a close-to-home reason. Freeman, for instance, who first began a church caregivers ministry eight years ago when he was pastor of First Baptist Church, Indian Springs, in Birmingham, has motivation in his family.
“I have a daughter, Hannah, with a disability; she is 9 now and her condition has pretty much helped me find my niche in ministry,” he said. “I think that is most often the case. The congregations that do this typically have a leader who is personally affected,” Freeman said.
The ministry Freeman left at Indian Springs also continues to reach the community even though he has moved to Huntsville.
Carol Hill, a member of Indian Springs, said respite care is offered the third Friday of every month from 6–10 p.m. Currently they are offering the care for children and youth and their siblings.
Hill, who has an 18-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy, said it was the special needs Sunday School class that attracted her and her husband to Indian Springs. Now the Hills are one of the group leaders for the respite care teams. Four groups rotate each month so that each group works only three times a year.
Knowing first hand the exhaustion that comes with raising a special needs child, Hill said the program offers parents an opportunity to re-energize and just “do what they want to do.”
Noting that two other area churches have similar ministries on the first and second Friday nights, Hill hopes the ministry catches on in other churches. “It is something that can grow,” she said. “There are more that we can reach.
“And it doesn’t have to be limited to children nor does it have to be limited to Friday nights,” she added.
Freeman said, “Any caring congregation can do respite care. You don’t have to be a large church or have children with special needs in your church. They’re in your community whether you see them or not. When you make respite care available, you’re suddenly seeing them.”
He explained that having special needs children often keeps parents from coming to church, since churches usually aren’t prepared to offer care for these children.
“These families face a lot of isolation and since churches don’t accommodate their children, they don’t go to church.
“I hope it (this ministry) will open a door for families who are rearing a child with special needs to become in involved in the faith community and that the faith community will see people’s abilities first and their disabilities second,” he said.
Banks Corl, minister of education at Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills, said Special Needs Family Ministry is the vision of a church member who saw a need for helping families with relatives dealing with mental or physical disabilities.
Corl said one of the ministry’s goals is not only to give family members a break, but also keep them involved with church activities.
“What is difficult for many of those families, is to get to church,” he said, echoing Freeman’s comments. “It’s difficult for many of those families to get to church. And when you do get to there, what do you do? If there’s not a trained person in the Sunday School class, then someone has to go in with that person.
“For many families, it’s very exhausting to try to get a (handicapped) child ready,” Corl said. “So what happens, a lot of times the families will not even be in church, even though their heart is there.”
Corl said families also need a break from children with severe limitations.
“What better time than worship time or Bible study time to say someone else is willing to be with your child,” Corl said.
Freeman said that since it is important the church provide a very high quality of care, before anyone works with the children, the volunteers are carefully trained. Among the trainers are a public school educator of children with special needs, a registered nurse who specializes in special needs children and an experienced parent of a child with special needs.
Weatherly Heights kicked off its program on a Disability Awareness Sunday last year by working with community services and government. The mayor of Huntsville and others whose decisions or medical professions impact special needs children helped with the service.
Last summer gave the teams of Weatherly Heights volunteers the chance to have one turn or more at actually doing this ministry. With that experience and confidence gained, the numbers of special needs children they can care for can increase, to open the doors of respite care to more caregivers.
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