September 2011
Grantee Stories
Preparing Parents for Success 
Assabet Valley Collaborative
It was a small, informal ceremony held in a school gymnasium. The whole event, which took less than a half hour from start to finish, would have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for Maria Torres.
Torres, 32, was one of five graduates who completed the Parent Partner Training offered through Assabet Valley Collaborative’s Family Success Partnership program in March. It was the first time since high school that she had earned a diploma.
Though the ceremony was simple, it was a major accomplishment for Torres who had dropped out of college in 2001 due to severe anxiety, manic depression and post-traumatic stress.
There to witness her achievement were 18 of her friends and family.
“They know what I’ve gone through so for them to see me stand there and get my diploma was shocking to them,” said Torres in a phone interview.
When Torres’ disability began affecting her children, she decided to seek help for herself and her family. She visited a local employment service agency which helps people with mental illness find jobs. It was there that Torres met Nicki Logan Eastburn, a program director from Assabet Valley Collaborative. She felt an immediate connection with Eastburn and a sense of hope.
“She basically taught me not to be afraid of the world,” said Torres.
Torres credits Eastburn with giving her the push she needed to succeed. Her newfound confidence and determination made her a perfect candidate for the program’s first Parent Partner Training which was designed to empower parents to act as mentors.
The Parent Partner Training is one component of a $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which was matched by local funding partners including the MetroWest Health Foundation.
The eight-week training teaches parents skills like navigating the school system, partnering with social service agencies, ways to access community-based resources, establishing appropriate boundaries and how to share their own family story.
Upon completion of the 20-hour program the participants are certified as Parent Partners through the Family Success Partnership and are assigned to work with other families as a peer mentor.
“It felt really good,” Torres said about graduating from the program. “It felt like I can be something. I can do something with my life. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like a blessing. I just felt like I had angels all around me.”
Comfort Care
Natick Visiting Nurse Association
Sam found out he had diabetes 19 years ago, when he was in his early 30’s. The Natick VNA first came into his life in 2005, when he fell down the stairs due to a sudden drop in blood sugar.
Over time, Sam was admitted to Natick VNA care seven times. Despite his best efforts and diligence, Sam’s diabetes progressed at a very rapid rate. He suffered abscesses, a bone infection and eventually had to have his right leg amputated at the knee.
Rehabilitating from this surgery and learning to function with one leg kept the Natick VNA at his door quite often. Complications from diabetes continued to mount: chronic kidney disease, pressure ulcers, anemia, liver necrosis and neuropathy. All this with a wife and two teenage children.
Last summer, Sam’s condition had progressed to a level that required something more. He knew that he would not live much longer and was terrified of suffering from intense pain. He longed for relief but also felt like death would be abandoning his family. Just a few months later he became one of the first patients of the Comfort Care program.
A specially educated Palliative Care nurse helped to ease Sam’s physical pain, our nutritionist helped Sam’s family to cook meals that Sam could more easily digest and that would nourish his body and a social worker with extensive experience in End of Life care began to visit.
The social worker helped Sam sort through the decisions he needed to make: who would make medical decisions, what kind of treatment he wanted and didn’t want, how comfortable he wanted to be, how he wanted to be treated by professionals, his family and friends and what he wanted his loved ones to know.
As part of this process, Sam dictated letters to each of his family members to the social worker, who took pictures of Sam with each of them. She talked one on one with each of them, allowing them to verbalize their struggle with Sam’s illness and constant suffering. Sam began to feel at peace with dying. He knew that his family would be ok when he was gone. They would get through it.