Photo courtesy Honza Soukup
We focus men’s team ministry primarily on the needs of their widowed and single parents in our congregations, but there is a subgroup of people in our churches who often need special attention: single caregivers of disabled loved ones. Over the past twenty years, I’ve come across a number of people in this type of situation: a divorced mother with a bedridden daughter needing constant round-the-clock care, an elderly widow with a partially paralyzed adult son, a young single mother with a daughter who has a congenital birth defect, a divorcee caring for a severly autistic son, and many others.
Widows, widowers and single parents face significant problems that are unique to their situations. But add a disabled dependent child or adult to the mix, and those problems multiply tenfold. Here are examples of some of the issues singles caring for their disabled loved ones face:
- Increased medical expenses, sometimes amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars or more
- An additional work load as a result of caring for their dependent relative
- Reduced income because they either can’t work outside the home at all or they have to reduce their hours
- Social isolation because they are either caring for their relative or working
- Increased risk of poverty, poor housing, poor medical care and poor nutrition
- Increased stress that can result in health issues for the care giver
- Little or no savings for retirement
- No provision for survivorship – older caregivers sometimes do not know who will care for their disabled dependent after they die
For these reasons, when your church does a pressing needs audit of your congregation (as it should on a regular basis), it needs to pay special attention to single caregivers of disabled loved ones. Here are suggestions for some actions your church can take to address these needs:
- First, identify who these people are.
- Have a staff member do an in-home interview to assess the need.
- The church may need to assume the role of advocate, researching available resources to help the single care giver in his or her situation.
- Besides providing a team of men to serve the single care giver once a month, recruit additional volunteers to provide respite care.
- The church may need to consider providing a special support fund for single caregivers of disabled loved ones.
If we’re going to take the command to meet “pressing needs” in our churches seriously (Titus 3:14), then we have to start with the neediest people in our congregations, and often the neediest are single caregivers of disabled loved ones.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Do you have any single caregivers of disabled loved ones in your church? How is your church addressing their needs?
A Simple Ministry Concept with Profound Implications
Teams of four men serving widows, single moms, fatherless children and others with long-term pressing needs in their churches and communities.
