Hospital Employees Choose Their Favorite Charity: Safe Families!

Each year, NorthShore University Health System-Evanston Hospital employees are asked to select a charity to receive a year-end gift called the North Shore Holiday Donation. This year, they chose LYDIA in recognition of the difference that Safe Families volunteers made in the life of a young couple and their baby.

The story began when the couple, two college students with no emotional or financial support from their families, decided to place their unborn baby for adoption.

Shortly after Baby Fae was born, however, she was diagnosed with hydrocephaly, a condition in which the brain fails to develop and is composed primarily of fluid. The diagnosis was devastating to the parents, who were very much aware that they would not be able to care for Fae for the brief time she was expected to live.

A hospital social worker began making calls, hoping to find a foster family for Fae. Every agency she called turned her down-one suggested she call back in two to three years! Finally, she remembered Safe Families.

Within an hour of her inquiry, program director Tom Maluga found a volunteer family. When told that their baby would be cared for, the parents wept with relief. Fae was discharged from the hospital at six days old and lived for another eight days. She died peacefully in the arms of her foster mother.

Employees were so moved by this story that they chose Safe Families as the recipient of the $10,000 grand prize!

What a testimony of the grace and generosity of followers of Christ.