Bon Secours Richmond Health Care Foundation

82 families and counting have been helped, including Amanda and her children.

Associate gifts helped Amanda get food for her special needs children.

For families who have children with special needs, everyday life can be challenging. For Amanda Jones, the mother of five special needs children, a global pandemic made simply feeding her kids nearly impossible.

“Allie alone has around 50 separate diagnoses,” she said. “She uses feeding tubes for nutrition and fluids. And my other daughter was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. When the panic hit, the grocery shelves were bare. You can’t substitute specific foods with regular foods. We couldn’t find the foods we desperately needed.”

Thanks to you, Amanda gets the special foods her children need at a food pantry started by Noah’s Children, Bon Secours’ pediatric palliative care program serving Central Virginia. As the impact of COVID-19 has grown, more families have turned to the food pantry for non-perishable and frozen foods, including gluten-free options and baby foods for children with special needs.

“It’s a scary time right now with the uncertainties surrounding our health and our economy,” she said. “Noah’s Children takes the pressure off so I’m not constantly worried about keeping my kids alive.”

Amanda appreciates access to specific food choices for her family, and she’s also grateful for the holistic, compassionate care that Noah’s Children provides.

“Because of them, I get to be mom and focus on normal mom stuff,” she said. “After talking to them, the weight of five kids and feeding tubes and medical things gets lifted off my shoulders for a while.”