Good News Notes:
“For families impacted by disabilities, Molly’s House offers rest.
A three-bedroom guest home within minutes of Northeast Georgia Medical Center and Tender Ones Therapy Services, the space was created by Ryan and Abigail Burle to offer respite to families who, like themselves, travel far and wide for specialized services.
As parents of 5-year-old triplets impacted by disabilities, the Burles spend anywhere between 10 and 16 weeks of the year traveling to cities like Philadelphia, Austin, Tulsa and Toronto for services — and those expenses rack up fast, Abigail Burle said.
“We started finding not only were we drowning in bills from the medical and therapy expenses but the cost to travel (and) the cost to pay parking somewhere every day,” she said. “Those are things that are not sponsored, usually, by grants, and never by insurance. So, a lot of families are really limited on settling for the care that their child gets or not being able to do the care at all because they truly cannot afford the additional costs that having a child with disabilities has.”
According to her research within the disability community, the average family with a child who has a disability spends 22-30% of their annual income on these expenses.
To help ease the burden of those seeking services in Gainesville, the Burles launched the nonprofit Love Your Story to provide a place for families to stay at no cost to them.
“We just saw a need, personally, in ourselves and had been (the recipients of) some generosity by some other people — like traveling to Texas, somebody offering us a house, and we were like, ‘Wow, this was such a place of rest for us physically, but also rest financially that a lot of families aren’t given,’” Abigail Burle said. “And that’s what we wanted to create here in our community.”
According to Burle, Gainesville has become a bit of a “hub” for families seeking neurological rehabilitation and other therapies via TOTS. The organization houses four different therapy intensives: physical, occupational, feeding and constraint-induced movement.
Speech and aquatic therapies are also among the services TOTS provides.
Molly’s House already has five families on the books, with the first slated to arrive June 4 from Asheville, North Carolina, for a three-week intensive therapy. Other families are traveling from Memphis and Franklin, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida.
Love Your Story/Molly’s House is awaiting IRS approval for official 501(c)(3) nonprofit recognition, a process that can span anywhere from six to 27 months, Burle said….”
View the whole story here: https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/local/georgia-nonprofit-offer-relief-families-impacted-by-disabilities/Q33JVTT5FNDQNOAB4RLYIZ7I64/