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Families & Allies Working Together
Stories About Personal Networks
Network 1
These stories are examples of what can happen when a person has a network, or Circle, of support around them over time. Each of the persons mentioned below has had a Network for several years. In each situation, we look for the strengths and interests of the person from which to build a meaningful life.
Begun in 1999, this Network started around the issue of helping a single woman get out of debt. She was unemployed and had been ordering magazine subscriptions with “pay later” offers. She also lived in a roach-infested apartment on a busy street with no trees to shade the building.
This was the first Network organized by Families & Allies and the Arc of Denver. Individuals from the woman’s church and several advocates from the Arc helped her to find a job with Barnes and Noble, and another part-time position with Dardano’s Gym in the Park Hill neighborhood. After she got out of debt, she went through the HOPE3 training program that helps people with disabilities buy their own homes with low-interest rates and down payments. When she had saved enough, she bought a condominium and invited over 100 people to her housewarming!
As she continued to save, she identified a goal of traveling overseas. Over the next year, she saved enough to travel to England by herself and stayed with the parents of one of the Arc advocates. This was the accomplishment of a lifetime dream!
Two years later, she met her future husband, and they were married on November 13, 2004. All of her many friends were invited to the wedding and it was a joyous time for all!
One of her greatest assets is determination. Her Network, which had met monthly for many years, still meets on a regular basis.
Network 2
Begun in 2002, this African American man who uses a wheelchair contacted us about beginning a Network. We met with him and discovered he likes movies, eating out, jazz, and was active on several boards, including People First of Denver and the Colorado Developmental Disabilities Council. He had moved to Denver from a southern state to avoid being placed in a nursing home by his family. (There is also a history of abuse when he was a child.) He had several unsuccessful jobs since his arrival in Denver. His biggest fear was the loneliness and depression he experienced during the holiday season.
We started his Network with a neighbor of his in the downtown building where he lives, a Developmental Disabilities Council staff member, an advocate from the Arc of Denver, and a pastor from the church he attended at that time. Over the years, his Network has changed slightly in membership, and new people have been recruited along with those changes.
We continue to help him with problem solving in the day-to-day issues that arise. He recently bought a van and hopes that friends will learn to drive it so they can all participate in community activities. We also help advocate with him for services he receives from Denver Options.
He is remarkable in that he has so much to give to others. He’s a deeply spiritual man and often sees the need in others before he considers what he needs for himself. The Network continues to meet monthly and assists him with financial planning, gently urging him to accomplish the goals he sets for himself (such as getting reading glasses and learning to read better), and monitors his health issues. He is still seeking paid employment. When we asked what he liked most about his Network, he said, “I never had so many caring people in my life before. This brings up my self esteem whereas I was always in the hospital before. Now I’m able to stay at home and have more things to do. I don’t think about suicide as often.”
Network 3
This Network was started two years ago around the issue of assisting this woman to move out of a nursing home where she had been placed unnecessarily. Thanks to the unflagging work of the Chair of the Families and Allies Board, we conducted a PATH for this woman, and several people continued to work with her in her Network.
Through the determined efforts of her Network and some assistance from the Atlantis Community, she was able to move out of the nursing home into her own one bedroom unit. Another member of her Network, a volunteer with the VA, insisted at a Network meeting that her veteran’s benefits were too low, and he intervened on her behalf with the VA, thereby increasing her monthly benefits from around $90 to well over $800.
Thanks in large part to her Network, this woman now lives independently, has a growing circle of friends, works actively with the Atlantis Community and ADAPT, and is very happy about her new life. In the past year, she has traveled to Washington DC to participate in ADAPT activities at the nation’s capitol. She also regularly attends Families and Allies functions, including Board meetings.
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