LIMA — In an effort to help children with cerebral palsy, the Lima and Van Wert Elks Lodges have donated $10,000 to the pediatric rehabilitation department at St. Rita’s Medical Center.
The money will enable St. Rita’s to purchase special equipment for children receiving physical, occupational and speech therapies. It will also assist families who are uninsured or underinsured by deferring the cost of a child’s treatment.
In past years, St. Rita’s has used these funds to purchase equipment such as the “Walkable,” which helps children who cannot support their own weight to walk, as well as necessary software upgrades that support the patient experience and equipment.
Jacque Daley-Perrin, president of the St. Rita’s Health Care Foundation, said the hospital is grateful to the Elks for their long-standing support of the pediatric rehabilitation program, and their commitment to helping children with cerebral palsy.
“We are so pleased and feel very honored and privileged that the Elks continue to support us in this way, and help our programs and services here,” Daley-Perrin said.
The donation is part of a decades-long commitment the Ohio Elks Cerebral Palsy Fund Board has made to area health care agencies who help children with cerebral palsy. The cerebral palsy board has donated more than $334,000 to Mercy Health facilities, including St. Rita’s, since 1972.
“The Elks have been so generous for decades now with this program, and assisting St. Rita’s in a way in which we are able to help kids,” Daley-Perrin said.
Louis Crow, a member of the Van Wert Elks Lodge and past state chair of the Ohio Elks Cerebral Palsy Board, said the organization raised these funds through donations, fundraisers and other events throughout the year. As a member of the cerebral palsy board for the last few decades, Crow said he has seen first-hand the impact these donations have on children and their families.
“We’re here to help make sure that the children get the care they need so they can have the best type of life that they can generate,” Crow said. “We hopefully can take some of those worries away from that family, along with providing the children with the opportunities to function better.”
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