Sunday, May 5, 2024
RAY OF SUNSHINE: Lori Johnson, the new executive director of Ruth’s Place, constantly builds her staff back up emotionally by reminding them why they do what they do and why their efforts are appreciated.
When COVID-19 hit Hood County, Ruth's Place was forced to move to Telehealth visits per social distancing guidelines, which left a detrimental mark on the health-related agency.
The mission of Ruth’s Place is to provide high quality health care and social services to low-income Hood County residents through the generosity of donors and volunteers.
Now, several volunteers and health care professionals — who would’ve normally helped with the charitable clinic and community outreach center before COVID-19 — have chosen not to come back, leaving Ruth’s Place with many spots to fill.
Lori Johnson, who was hired as the new executive director of Ruth’s Place in mid-April, has since made it her goal to fill those empty spots.
“Even now, we're not seeing as many clients as we did before COVID, so that's kind of what I'm trying to do — hit the streets and just let everyone know our services,” she said.
Johnson has spent her entire adult life helping people, beginning when she graduated from high school and became a nurse’s aide. Her additional 35 years working in senior living gave her a sense of purpose. Unfortunately, the pandemic reached the senior living facility that Johnson worked at in southwest Fort Worth, leaving her to cope with many losses in a short amount of time.
“It just emotionally was very difficult because they're family, you know, I mean, you see them every day,” Johnson said. “I didn't lose them over a long period of time. We lost a lot very quickly for two, three weeks.”
The emotional toll was too much for Johnson, so she made the decision to leave her long-term position.
“I just realized that I needed to heal myself, so I made the decision to leave the industry knowing I still wanted to do something to give back to the community and get what makes me intrinsically feel better every day,” she said.
Johnson has only worked at Ruth’s Place for about two months, but she already intends to advocate around the community to hopefully gain more volunteers.
“I think the biggest thing right now is just getting the community to realize who we are, and gathering more support,” she said. “With everything that has happened with COVID the last couple of years, we're finding people that are willing to not only donate as much, but donate their time and we consist completely of our volunteers, but you always need more, especially in the medical field. Most of our nurses and doctors are all retired or not practicing as much as they used to, so we have like six docs right now that come and give their time. I mean, Dr. Bachand, who's been here forever, he spends an hour with almost each one of his patients.”
Ruth’s Place Clinic, 1411 Crawford Ct., is equipped with six exam rooms, two dental stations, a conference room and an on-site lab and pharmacy.
Currently both the dental clinic and counseling services are not available, but a local vision provider that’s closed on Fridays has Johnson send clients to her office.
“When COVID hit, we lost our mental health counselor, but I've been speaking to a couple different ones, so I'm trying to find someone that will come in and help us with that as well,” Johnson said. “I’m hoping next year more providers will come in and help.”
The clinic also offers free medical supplies like walkers, potty chairs and wheelchairs.
Ruth’s Place Community Outreach Center located in Oak Trail Shores, 2723 Maplewood St., hosts a weekly food pantry every Tuesday in collaboration with Granbury First United Methodist Church.
“We've got probably about 30, 35 families right now that we service,” Johnson said. “It went down, everything kind of decreased after COVID, so we're trying to build that back up. We are gonna start bringing over some food baskets on Tuesday, so that way we could possibly serve more people here (at the clinic) too. We're just putting that program together though.”
The Community Outreach Center works closely with Granbury ISD to help children who have struggled with their reading and math skills, in kindergarten through fifth grade.
“Numbers have shown that if you're not on your grade level by the time you're in third grade, you're most likely not to graduate high school, and then that increases even more if you're a person of color, so they have an after-school program and we have volunteers that come out and they read with the kids,” Johnson said. “Just from what they've been doing since January, they've already been successful with almost every single one of their kids, where they have gotten them up to their reading level, if not above, which is huge.”
The Community Outreach Center hosts free parent café workshops in conjunction with Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth to educate and equip families with useful tools. A summer lunch program is also available at the outreach center.
“From lunchtime from 11:30 to 12:30, we do free meals, hot meals to any of the kids in the neighborhood,” Johnson said. “We also are starting where the families that are coming to get the food, we have a shop that is actually taking what they produce and items we're getting from Tarrant County Food Bank, and creating menus and creating recipes, so when we're giving them their boxes of the food for the week, they can come in and actually get the recipes and they can see what to do with the food so they can utilize all of it for the week.”
Johnson said a grant is currently being worked on to get quarterly health screenings done at the outreach center.
“Hood County has a huge, huge low-income population that has no health care and unless you're in that position, you just don't realize it,” she said.
As of recently, the outreach center now has a backyard for the children, equipped with flower beds and picnic tables.
“We have someone that's going to come out and do some grass back there, build us a playground and put in a community basketball court,” Johnson said.
She said one of the main things she’s focused on since coming to Ruth’s Place has been to build her team back up.
“Anybody who's been in health care during COVID, it takes effect on you mentally, so right now, I'm loving on them and I am building them back up and getting them to remember, ‘What's your why? Why do you do this? What is your passion?’ Especially when you have volunteers, people overlook that you’re volunteering for a reason, but if you don't feel like you're getting something intrinsically out of it and still want appreciation, sometimes you’ll go volunteer somewhere else,” Johnson said.
She said she has always worked hard in her career to build teams, bring people together and find out their passions.
“It is not a nine-to-five job,” Johnson added. “You have to be passionate to do this.”
