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Grants from three sources
Thanks to grants from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Iowa Finance Authority, plus a City of Dubuque CP2 grant, the program is targeted to begin operating early in 2003.

The city, state and federal funds were used for the acquisition and rehabilitation of an apartment building located on property adjacent to Hillcrest’s main office in Dubuque.

Support Services included
The HUD grant also includes funds to provide various support services such as an on-site case manager, education, child care, transportation, substance abuse and mental health services. Part of the grant will also be used to cover some of the operating and administrative costs involved in the program.

Project is collaborative effort
The project is a result of community planning begun in 2000, with many community agencies involved in a HUD Continuum of Care planning process. The process highlighted a gap in community services to homeless families which included teenaged boys and men.

The Help for Today, Hope for Tomorrow campaign seeks funds not only for the HOPES project, but also to support renovation of our counseling center, expansion of the special education school with two additional classrooms and expanded kitchen facilities, improvement in accessibility to the Dubuque campus, and the acquisition of a critically needed integrated data base system for clinical and financial records. The campaign will also help build the endowment so that Hillcrest can ensure that its services will be available in the future.

The ability to feel empathy for another human being — even one who may be a virtual stranger to you — is a rare quality in a person. It is an attribute that many of us perhaps wish that we possessed in greater abundance.

When the ability to empathize with another person leads to an action which results in a life being saved, it is not only noteworthy, but of such significance that it should be shared with others. I am happy to share such a story with you in this column . . . a story which involves a member of the the Hillcrest staff. (I should note here that I would never have heard this story directly from the person involved. I became aware of it through another staff person.)

Don Keck, a Hillcrest residential treatment supervisor, was recently in a meeting with a client’s mother and aunt. After the meeting, the aunt complained of being short of breath and felt that she needed to go to a doctor.

Instead of simply writing down directions to the nearest hospital, Don offered to ride along with the mother and aunt to show them the way.

On the way to the hospital, the woman’s breathing became increasingly more labored, and she eventually became unresponsive and was barely breathing.

At this point Don instructed the woman who was driving to honk the car horn and carefully go around cars waiting at the stop signs to save valuable time. They pulled into the hospital parking lot honking the horn.

Don then assisted the woman into the Emergency Room and knocked on glass windows to alert the medical personnel of the situation. They rushed the woman into a room and proceeded to try reviving her.

Meanwhile, Don — stating he was a “friend of the family” — waited in the consultation room with the mother, lending her emotional support. A chaplain joined them and stated that the situation wasn’t looking good.

They waited in the room together to hear news from the doctor. When he finally came in, he said that the woman was starting to respond. He also informed them that if they had arrived at the hospital just two minutes later, the woman surely would have died.

Don returned to work only after he was sure that the woman was out of immediate danger. Later, he called the hospital from his home to see how she was, and to make sure the hospital would allow the mother to stay there with her sister (who was in ICU).

Hillcrest does not support any specific candidate, but we offer you a guide as to which candidate for whom to vote. To sort through the rhetoric and the good intentions of politicians, we offer you the following questions to ask every candidate.

1. Do you support increasing the amount of local, state, and/or federal dollars allocated to serving children, families, and persons with disabilities?

2. Do you support paying the private providers of services to these people a payment that covers the cost of the care and provides a wage to their employees that is equitable with the public employee counterparts?

3. Do you support a law that requires private insurance companies to provide the same coverage for mental health and substance abuse as they do for other medical services?

Reflections in the Park will run in Dubuque’s Louis Murphy Park from Nov. 27 through Jan. 1. This will be the 8th year for the event, which has drawn more than 426,000 visitors since it first opened in 1995.

Season of Lights will open on Nov. 19, and run through Dec. 31 in Squaw Creek Park located outside of Marion, Iowa. More than 12,000 vehicles carrying 61,750 visitors went through the park during its inaugural season last year.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

There is a section of my lawn that had been filled with a lot of rocks. Every night for the past month we’ve been spending our evenings clearing away load after load. I mean it’s a LOT of rock. Deeper and deeper we dig, and still we have not reached rockless-ness.

It was intended to be a weed-preventing border, I suppose. And it sounds logical: fill an area with so many rocks, and so little soil that nothing could possibly grow. Right? Right. But there is only one problem with the idea: it doesn’t work. Most amazingly, before we could start harvesting rocks, we had to pull up tons of weeds. Because even so – they grow. <

There are many souls I work with in residential treatment that may not have known the best soil, may not have been in a prime location to catch the sunshine. Some may even have set down roots in rocky places. But even so, by the grace of God, they grow.

Recognizing the importance of this church connection to the ongoing success of our ministry, Hillcrest is renewing its efforts to recognize and strengthen the bond which has proven so vital to the agency since it was founded in 1896. This continuing connection can perhaps be best illustrated by our relationship with St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Dubuque, which has continued for well over a century to support our mission.

Church Relations Coordinator
An important step in this process is the naming of our new Church Relations Coordinator, Reverend Cathy S. Allen. She will be making personal visits to pastors of the United Methodist, Presbyterian and other churches supporting the Hillcrest mission, as well as meeting with district superintendents and presbyters in Iowa. She will also be scheduling and providing presentations and preaching opportunties in churches, sessions, councils, women’s associations, circles, mission committees, mission fairs and adult Sunday School classes.

Recognizing church support
Hillcrest has begun recognizing those churches and groups who have supported our ministry with gifts for at least 10 consecutive years, dating to the time our computerized database system was installed. Those to be recognized, and the consecutive years of giving shown in our records, include:

$13,000 from the Dubuque Racing Association for furniture/remodeling at Peterson Lodge.

$50,000 from the City of Dubuque for transitional housing (HOPES project).