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Red Cross Partnerships Give One Man a New Outlook
After receiving help, Ronnie Cook is once again playing music
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 — Client Recovery Specialists act as advocates for their clients. They were given the mission to ensure that clients were given the best chance to recover they could give. This meant looking outside the Red Cross, to other partner agencies for help.
(Photo credit: Joye Green/American Red Cross)
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Like many people from Mississippi and Louisiana, the Cook family and their home were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Ronnie Cook had no insurance and had been searching for help. That help came in the form of Red Cross Client Recovery Specialist Joye Green.
When Joye met Ronnie and his family, they were living in a mobile home, which was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But worse, Ronnie was emotionally and physically defeated by the storm. Ronnie was on disability because of the neck and back surgery he had undergone prior to the storm and the stress of trying to survive only made his condition worse. Friends and family noticed the change in his usual friendly, gregarious demeanor. He suffered from anxiety attacks about the future and his health worsened.
When Joye met Ronnie she realized that sending a man still broken into a new house was not recovery, both had to be helped. Joye’s social work skills were put to use when Ronnie was reluctant to talk to psychiatric professionals through the Emotional Support Program. They talked all the time including nights and weekends when Ronnie needed to talk things out.
While she tried to help him with his emotional recovery, Joye also started to work on getting Ronnie into a new house. The mobile home was so badly damaged that only one room was livable, and it needed 2x4s to hold up the ceiling. The old mobile home needed to be demolished and removed to make room for a new one, but the job was compounded because the house collapsed on the foundation making the job difficult.
It was during this time that the partnerships that had been developed during recovery showed their true value. County Supervisor Floyd Moore worked with county agencies to have the damaged mobile home dragged off the site. When they could not find anyone to cut down trees that could pose a threat, Mississippi Power Company stepped up and cleared a number of trees from the property. They also assisted in wiring a new power pole for the property. Catholic Charities in Jackson helped with the costs associated with moving and setting up the family’s new home. The local Red Cross chapter also provided Ronnie with a hotel to stay at until his home was ready.
Today Ronnie is a man with a new home and a new outlook on life. He has taken the steps to enroll in the Access Emotional Support Program to get professional counseling and is working on a weight loss program to help alleviate some of his medical problems. He has even picked up his guitar for the first time since Hurricane Katrina and is playing with his old band again. All these changes in one man’s life were made possible because partners worked together and brought a little Joye into this man’s life through the Hurricane Recovery Program.
The American Red Cross helps people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies. Last year, almost a million volunteers and 35,000 employees helped victims of almost 75,000 disasters; taught lifesaving skills to millions; and helped U.S. service members separated from their families stay connected. Almost 4 million people gave blood through the Red Cross, the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. The American Red Cross is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs. The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work.
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