3 min read March 2024 — Rebecca Helterbrand, president and CEO of Respite Care, talked to Invest: about the importance of military medical care in San Antonio for families with special needs. She also discussed the nonprofit’s strategy to partner with UT Health San Antonio and other nonprofits to increase access to its care services and to help families contribute to the economic development of the community.
What are the most important contributions of Respite Care to the San Antonio healthcare sector?
We offer a unique value proposition. We are a nonprofit that focuses on children with disabilities and complex medical conditions. Our services are critical. We help prevent vulnerable families from tipping into a care system where their children can be removed and become the responsibility of the state and federal government. Additionally, our services support economic development in that when our families have the healthcare and early childhood education resources that they need, then those families can contribute to the economic standing of our community by actively working or advancing their education.
How would you describe the state of the healthcare industry in San Antonio?
It is one of the most important sectors of the local economy. San Antonio is often viewed from outside as a major tourist destination, but we are more than that. We are also a military city, and our bioscience and healthcare industries are among the biggest local employers. Those sectors converge in interesting manners. In the case of children with disabilities and complex medical conditions, while only roughly 12 to 15% of our population has special needs, up to 26% of military families have members with special needs.
Many military families want to be in San Antonio because of the military medicine and care opportunities that exist here. There are unique factors about that convergence of healthcare and the military and the work of Respite Care with families with special needs and children with complex medical needs.
What strategies has Respite Care implemented to deliver high-level care to patients?
We have prevention programs that have reached the highest quality that the state can offer. Those programs have earned the Texas Rising Star four-star certification, and we are now exploring national accreditation as part of our pursuit of excellence. We have also launched partnerships that expand our services beyond our campus to provide care services at partnering nonprofits, started dual-language classrooms, and operate an emergency shelter as part of our crisis program. The state of Texas recently recognized our emergency center as the top performer across all shelters in terms of children’s safety.
How do you hope the healthcare industry as a whole evolves to create a more affordable system?
We need to continue the full-court press to provide people with access to healthcare coverage. Healthcare is a universal human right, so we need to find ways to cross political lines and find solutions. Additionally, as people access healthcare, we need to ensure that there is a medical home component where we can coordinate care and develop trusted relationships with them. Care is currently fragmented and, in the case of the children we serve, can be highly specialized. To deal with this, we created a medical home on our campus and we encourage other organizations to embrace that medical home concept.
What partnerships has Respite Care developed to support its patients?
The most important partnership that Respite Care of San Antonio has is with UT Health San Antonio. We operate our medical clinic in partnership with that organization. They understand the needs of our vulnerable target population as well as the economic strength for families that we are trying to achieve. UT Health also cares for the children in our emergency shelter and supports our prevention programs and wraparound supports that address the social determinants of health.
Other partnerships include our work with other nonprofits in our community that serve a similar population to provide early childhood education and healthcare supports to their families. The more we can collaborate and align our service models with those of other nonprofits, the more families will benefit across the board. We have partnerships with many organizations, including Any Baby Can of San Antonio, Family Service Association, DePelchin Children’s Center, and Texas Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. Our goal is to provide respite or relief in the caregiving process while helping children achieve their innate potential.
What is in the facilities pipeline for Respite Care? Are there any plans for upgrades, renovations, or expansions?
Respite Care received donations consisting of several beautiful historic homes in Monta Vista. If a child needs to live at our emergency shelter, they will arrive to an incredible set of homes made of childhood dreams. Nevertheless, those houses require a ton of maintenance and support, so there is a constant quest for proactive building maintenance. Additionally, as we prepare to bring our services in a more structured way to other organizations, we are trying to carve out space within school districts that have unused classrooms and within nonprofits that have extra space so that Respite Care can offer permanent services without having to purchase new buildings.
What new legislations and regulations are you keeping your eye on due to their potential impact on the operations of Respite Care?
The word respite is never associated with families and childcare, which is a cultural and policy element that we need to overcome. Raising children is already one of the toughest jobs, but having a child with special needs or complex medical conditions means that difficulty increases nearly four times in terms of risk of abuse or neglect. From a policy and advocacy standpoint, we need to normalize the fact that getting respite or relief from caregiving for children is an important facet of our culture and economy.
The second thing is early childhood education. Having free, accessible, and available education is a human right, but we often get it wrong when it comes to children with special needs and complex medical conditions. It is against the law to not offer a child with those conditions care in programs, but it is extremely difficult for organizations to provide that care. Respite Care San Antonio exists to fill that gap. We need to ensure that special education, mainstream education, and early childhood education is equitable and accessible for everyone. Through policy and funding, we will help children to live up to their innate potential.
What are some of the most important milestones that Respite Care has reached toward supporting children with complex diseases in San Antonio?
Our data pipeline includes evidence-based assessments of how children are doing under our care and whether the services that we provide are relieving stress for parents and guardians. Between 93% and 97% of families participating in our services find some measures of relief in a stressful family situation. Our other data pipelines are waitlists that focus on how many people wait for services and how we can expand those services so sheer numbers of children can receive services.
While we have early childhood education centers, we also offer episodic care, such as mothers’ day out on Mondays and Wednesdays, parents’ night out on Fridays, families’ day out on Saturdays and camps when school is not in session and families have nowhere else to go. We data map to see how families use services.
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