Pet Food Pantries

In addition to food pantries, there are pet food pantries to serve those who are unable to afford pet food to feed their pets. The rationale behind having pet food pantries is to help people keep their pets rather than risk them giving up their animals.

If you have any extra pet food or pet supplies, please consider donating them to animal shelter. Like any nonprofit, they’re always in need of donations. Look around your home, do you have any toys your cat or dog is no longer interested in? Is their food they don’t like to eat? Can you afford to buy food or cat litter to donate? While I strongly support Craigslist and Freecycle, please consider donating your supplies to a shelter instead. It might also save you some time since you won’t have to worry about people flaking out on you

Chicago

In Chicago, several different animal shelters have their own pantries.

AniMeals
Serves Rogers Park and Uptown.

PAWS
Done by appointment. Will provide about one month’s worth of pet food.

For more information on the PAWS Chicago Pet Food Bank, please call the PAWS Chicago Pet Food Bank Hotline at 773-475-9426.

Tree House
(773) 784-5488 ext. 221

National

Itchmo Pet News

National Food Bank Directory

Unresolved: Bankruptcy, Medicaid, Unemployment, etc.

I haven’t posted in a while. I try to post when I have something helpful to say, rather than just complaining. Sadly, I’ve got nothing but a higher cell phone bill from going over on my minutes when calling so many places asking for help.

Here’s what has happened with the main problems I’m experiencing:

Rent and Utilities

I have yet to find a group that will provide me with any type of assistance. I’m repeatedly told to call 311 and to request temporary rental assistance. Problem is, you need to be late on your rent and have a letter from your landlord saying so in order to be eligible. For electricity, you need to be two months late to get assistance, and I forget who that is through. In the end, the basic conclusion is that you won’t receive any kind of monetary assistance unless you are already on the verge of being evicted or having your electricity cut off.

While I can’t say I’ve exhausted all the phone number people have referred me to, but after two weeks of making calls I think that if there was an answer, someone would’ve given it to me by now.

We’ve asked our landlord if we could have our rent lowered and he said he’d get back to us. The unspoken incentive for the landlord is that we might be forced to break our lease because of our financial situation. Even if we don’t break the lease, we’d certainly move at the end of our lease, meaning he’d have to search for new tenants again.

Losing Medicaid

From talking to mental health agencies, it seems that we’re screwed. While one place said they could help advocate for my keeping Medicaid if I had been an existing client, another said that it’s common practice for Medicaid to be granted to people stating psychiatric disability, only have it revoked. They had no ideas on how I could get it reinstated, however. All the places I was referred to gave me the verbal equivalent of a shoulder shrug. I was told, however, that if I got Social Security, then I would have a better chance of regaining Medicaid.

I simply don’t have the money to pay out-of-pocket for sliding scale clinics or generic medications. This means a return to Stroger Fantus Clinic with its dreaded walk-in routine. I’m hoping at least that I can reschedule appointments with the psychiatrists at Fantus so I don’t have to wait all day to be referred to a specialist.

Even though I can’t afford to pay for doctors’ visits, I may have to anyway. My husband needs follow-up on a surgery and I’m reluctant to leave my current psychiatrist as I’m in the process of having my medications changed. To make matters worse, Stroger will only accept prescriptions from a Cook County physician. This means, I have to go through Stroger’s walk-in process if I want to get any of my medications refilled at their pharmacy. While I can understand the possible reasoning behind it, (wanting to check that you aren’t being prescribed medications that Fantus deems unnecessary), it makes the process no less burdensome.

Lack of Income

My husband is declaring bankruptcy because we simply don’t have the money to make his minimum payments. Because we have no income, he’s going to file under Chapter 7. Filing bankruptcy isn’t cheap either. With all the lawyer and court fees, it’ll come to at least $1,500. Where is that going to come from? Probably cash advances from my cards, supposing I can get enough of those.

I’m trying to dig up money wherever it may be. Cashing in “Rewards Points” from credit cards, selling belongings (anyone interested in comic books from the 90’s or bikes that need fixing?), and … I can’t even come up with a third idea.

Making all these phone calls and my husband’s recovery from surgery has lowered the number of jobs we’ve been applying to. I know we’ve got to get our asses in gear and apply, apply, apply but it’s hard to be at all optimistic. This is why networking, however, helpful, is largely out for now. Well, that and the depression that still makes it hard to leave the house or want to talk to people.

Applying for Graduate School

I’ve gone to the two graduate school fairs that I know of and have a list of two schools that I’m definitely applying to. I also have been able to scratch several schools off my list. There’s two more schools that I probably should investigate more, but on the face of it don’t appear to be good choices.

I’ve gone no further than this. I still have to go to these schools’ open houses and do more research on them to prepare my application. The whole financial mess has put graduate school on the back burner. This of course doesn’t alter the application deadlines. All it does is call into question how I’m going to pay for graduate school if I even get in.

Filing for Bankruptcy

Strangely, out of everything, this is the only project that is actually progressing. How depressing. I figure that it’s because we pay someone to help us with it. *sigh*

If anyone has any ideas on how to solve these problems, please let me know. No scams though; they’re a waste of time to read.

Free H1N1 Flu Shots in Chicago

If you check out this link or call 311 you can find out when and where the City of Chicago is providing free H1N1 flu shots.

It is limited to certain groups though, which is also listed on the webpage I linked to.

We Have to Declare Bankruptcy

If you’ve read through a lot of my blog, you can probably guess my age within a few years. For those that haven’t, let me assure you, no one but a child would consider me old.

I don’t own a home, a car, or have any valuable property. I have no assets. Neither does my husband, and yet we’re looking at bankruptcy because of a bad decision and a really, really shitty economy. Oh, and mental illness.

My husband left his job to move to Chicago. We expected him to be able to transfer. That didn’t happen. We at least expected him to find a job before our finances ran out. He has years of real work experience in related fields. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Now we’re looking at options we never considered. I don’t know why we didn’t think of me filing for disability earlier, especially since I couldn’t work because of the grip of my bipolar depression and OCD. Perhaps it was because I never thought of myself as disabled and didn’t know mental illness fell under the category of disability. I’m still not sure if it does in most cases since it’s not taken as seriously as physical illnesses.

Last week I started calling mental health nonprofits to ask for assistance with finding jobs. I hadn’t considered this before, and looked for jobs on my own, though I did contact these same groups asking for a job with their organization.

My husband has started looking into bankruptcy lawyers and research the issue online. We simply don’t have enough to cover the minimum payments on our credit cards and are going to see our interest rates explode when our payments become late. I don’t know where our rent money is going to come from. I was able to get a loan from my mom that will cover one month, but she says that’s all she’s willing to give me. Other relatives are tapped out as my husband’s mom recently gave him a sizable sum and her work hours were cut. From the loan, we have enough for November’s rent, since rent comes before all other debts.

I want to try negotiating a lower rent with our landlord rather than have him be surprised by a sudden missed or incomplete payment. My husband wants to consult with a lawyer first. If evicted, we don’t have anywhere to go. I refuse to give up our pets; we promised them permanent homes. I want to be a good pet parent and I don’t want to imagine the guilt if I fail to live up to my responsibilities as a mommy.

We’re hoping that my husband can declare bankruptcy and that we can keep a handle on my credit. Without a job though, we’ll eventually run out of money for my minimum credit card payments, regardless of how low they may be.

To top it all off, my husband is in more pain from the surgery than he thought he would be and his doctor refuses to prescribe stronger pain medications. While I can justify trying to push him to do work when he’s feeling depressed, I can’t do that when he’s in pain and needs to sleep as part of recovery.

Scholarship Information for Mental Illness / Disabilities

Note: I cannot endorse any of the links below. If you do find more resources, please let me know. If any of the links I include appear suspicious, please let me know that as well.

Scholarships for People with Mental Illness

American Association on Health and Disability

Check later in the year / 2010.

Incite Education

Lilly Reintegration Scholarship
Limited to Bipolar and Schizophrenia

Scholarships for Seeking Careers in / related to Social Work

Individual schools may offer scholarships for their students.

NASW Foundation

Jewish Vocational Services
Need to be Jewish and have been born / raised in Cook County area OR one continuous year of full-time employment in Cook County or Chicago metropolitan area prior to starting professional education. Covers lots of career options besides those related to social work.

Scholarship Search Sites

Note: I have not gone through these. Never pay a fee to have someone else look for scholarships for you. This is a scam. Please let me know if any of these websites are sketchy.

College Scholarships
CollegeScholarships.org

eNotes
www.enotes.com/scholarships-loans

Fast Web.com
www.fastweb.com

FinAid
www.finaid.org

FindTuition.com
www.findtuition.com

Info.com
www.collegescholarships.info.com

NextStudent
www.nextstudent.com

Scholarship Chicago
www.scholarshipchicago.com

ScholarshipExperts.com
www.scholarshipexperts.com

Scholarship.com
www.scholarships.com

School Soup
www.schoolsoup.com

SimpleTuition
www.simpletuition.com

General Resources

Health Resource Center – George Washington University
- for scholarship information, probably best to call

NAMI

Medicaid Horrors

I’m getting more scares from Medicaid than from anything else this October and it’s not even Halloween.

I didn’t realize before moving to Chicago that the social service system in this state was so bad. Illinois is seriously financially conservative and Medicaid is fucked up.

Medicaid sent us letters and slips saying we were covered for the month of October, then, out of the blue, they sent us letters saying we both had been denied because we didn’t qualify as disabled. Ironically, I’ve been getting additional forms from the federal government to apply for disability, suggesting that they are seriously considering my application. Either that or they really, really like paperwork.

To make matters worse, the denial letter was dated October 5th and we got it October 7th. However, my husband had surgery, which his doctor said Medicaid had pre-approved, on October 6th. Fuck! To boot, the surgeon, while working at a hospital, did not count as a hospital employee, so we wouldn’t be able to get financial forgiveness of any sort from the hospital for the surgery or follow-up visits.

My husband repeatedly tried calling DHS to no avail as he couldn’t get anyone on the phone and no one returned his calls. Typical. We got in touch with our state senator, the same one who helped push our application along the first time around, and haven’t heard back from her yet. It’s been at least four days. We’re gonna have to call again.

We also called a discounted lawyers group and left a message. No response from them either.

I also called mental illness advocacy groups. Thresholds seemed to say they could help, but I’d need to go through an intake or something, and oh, that was generally billed to Medicaid. Huh? There also see to be some other way of them getting reimbursed through other sources. I’ve tried to call the intake department, but again, got voicemails. I left messages anyway.

Today, my husband went back to the hospital as the wound wasn’t looking very good and his original surgeon’s instructions didn’t seem to make sense. I figure that medical bills or not, a serious infection would be worse. After seeing the new surgeon and getting instructions that made more sense, he checked with the billing department. Low and behold, he was told that we are covered by Medicaid until the end of the month, and our coverage ends November 1st. Oy. This of course comes after many missed doctor’s visits that we now have to hope we can reschedule and get resolved before we lose Medicaid.

In the end, we’ll still have to appeal and my husband’s research says that most appeals are denied the first time around, and you’ll have to try again. There’s also been the suggestion that you lose Medicaid when they see that you’re using it. *shakes head*

At least for medication refills, I’m hoping we can go back to the Fantus Clinic at Stroger and get them refilled. However, we’re going to have to go through the walk-in clinic all over again because that’s the only way to get a PCP. The PCP will then decide whether or not he wants to prescribe the medications we’re already on. Since none of our doctors are with Cook County Hospital, they won’t accept prescriptions from them or let us transfer prescriptions from our current pharmacy. There’s no way to we can afford to pay even the generic prices for our medications so I guess it’s back to spending 12+ hours at Stroger after getting no sleep. Fuck Medicaid.

—-

Why can’t Congress pass that damn health care bill already. The public option is already dead and that was one of the issues that conservatives had the most trouble with. Why must something so important take so long?! Most everyone says they agree that the health insurance system in America is vastly inadequate, and yet they’re still fighting about it. Call your Senators and Representatives and complain! You the voter elected them. You the taxpayer pay their salaries. Call them!

Update: Financing Grad School

This past week I’ve gone to two grad school fairs. I used the opportunity to talk to admissions counselors and school representatives from schools that I’m interested in and ones that I’m not. This way, I could ask the same questions of many different people to see if there was a consensus. The answers I got were consistent.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot of private scholarships for working in mental health or social work. Most financial support comes from the programs themselves or perhaps from the university.

Rather than being grants, financial support generally comes in the form of graduate assistantships. Work study may be granted by the government. You apply for both as part of your overall application, no extra work seems to be needed. The earlier you apply, the greater the chance of not only being admitted, but getting the competitive assistantships as well. In addition, it was suggested that having a relationship with the program rather than just being a name on a piece of paper (much like looking for a regular job) would be to your benefit, so long as your interactions were positive. While admittance for Spring and Summer programs may be less competitive, there is less money to go around.

The earliest you can file for FAFSA is January 1st. Grad school applications may be due before then, or at least accepted, depending on the program.

While most of the schools were more than happy to talk about the financial support they offered their students, or at least their students could apply for, they drew blanks when I asked about support from outside their schools. The best they could offer was to Google it. Some said to try talking to financial aid.

Overall, it’s expected that students finance their graduate education. While the schools will give some support, there isn’t the level of financial aid that exists for undergraduate students. Not exactly what I’m looking to be told when a career in social work pays very poorly.

One plus at least is that some schools readily waived the admissions fee without asking for any proof of financial hardship. Some gave a voucher for stopping at their table. Another school said I just had to apply online. Not all schools do this of course. Strangely, Jane Addams at UIC straight up told me that through finding financial support I could reimburse myself. Either that or ask relatives for the application fee. I wasn’t expecting to hear this from a public school when the private schools had waivers.

As for private financial support, online sources suggested trying employers, professional associations, etc. The same idea as for undergraduate. There could also be loan forgiveness, but this was on a case by case basis, and I didn’t get the impression that this was big in the field of social work.

If any of my readers have any other ideas or resources, please let me know.

Explaining Shortcomings on a Grad School Application – From Admissions Counselors

Question for readers: What advice have you gotten on this subject? What have you decided to do? Please feel free to leave comments.

This past week I’ve gone to two grad school fairs. I used the opportunity to talk to admissions counselors and school representatives from schools that I’m interested in and ones that I’m not. This way, I could ask the same questions of many different people to see if there was a consensus, and also to try to see how people reacted to my talking about being mentally ill before talking to my target schools. Surprisingly, the reception I got was positive and the answers were consistent.

Gap in Resume Due to Mental Illness:

I was told not to worry about this. Many of the admissions people said that they’ve had other applicants reveal the same kind of information and how much I want to disclose, if I want to disclose at all, is up to me. What they’re concerned about is that whatever my problems were are past and dealt with, and that I can succeed in their program. I can disclose my mental illnesses as a way of talking about why I’m interested in the field or I can just say that I had personal issues that prevented me from working or volunteering. My disclosure would not count for or against me. It was clear though that focusing on it a lot in my application would not help me as it was not relevant to the application.

Trouble Getting References:

What I was told matched much of what I read online. References from academic sources are preferred as they want to make sure that you can succeed in their program. However, for social work, academic references do not have to be from social work professors. The references are to address my skills and abilities as a student, and thus can come from any department. If needed, I could use references from a work source, though of course I personally can’t do that. I guess my reference section will be weak. One school suggested that my high GPA might help balance things out.

Lack of Work Experience:

It seems that the schools readily accept a mix of students coming directly out of undergraduate with no work experience and those who have worked in the real world. The focus is on how good of a match the program is for you and what you can bring to the program. Those without work experience have energy and technological skills and are already in an academic mindset, while those coming with work experience have real world information to test against what is being covered in class. However, since I was talking to people in admissions, there was no way to tell how much lack of work experience would affect the quality of my internships.

Explaining Shortcomings on a Grad School Application – from Idealist.org

Idealist.org’s article “Admissions and the Application” suggests talking to the Admissions Departments of your target school about any shortcomings in your application, such as low grades, difficulty finding academic references, needing certain coursework, etc.

If worse comes to worst, and you have a shortcoming in your application that you can’t overcome within a year, write a brief addendum to the essay or the application to address the shortcoming. For example, if your grades were weak during a certain semester, explain why. Don Asher’s “Graduate Admissions Essays” recommends that the cause for any shortcoming you discuss fit these criteria: it should be in the past, resolved, sympathetic, and unlikely to recur. It should also be true.

*

*http://www.idealist.org/en/psgerc/application.html Retrieved 10/2 12:28am

I’m Out of Rent Money

My husband told me yesterday that while October’s rent has been paid, November’s rent is going to be tough. We’ve been liquidating all of our bank accounts and apparently we might go negative trying to pay for November. This of course doesn’t even begin to take into account household expenses like utilities, food, and pet care. (The dog went to the vet today for an eye infection, thankfully, the vet gave us a reduced price).

How’d it get to this point? A lot longer unemployment than I ever thought possible. The economy hitting the shitter far harder than the TV news people ever predicted (so much for paying attention to the news).

My husband is supposed to be the breadwinner. He’s been out of work since March and is no closer to a job now than he was then. We don’t even get call-backs for interviews.

Both of our applications for disability are still pending. My husband is having a semi-invasive outpatient surgical procedure tomorrow that he should’ve gotten several years ago. He’ll be checking again when he arrives for the appointment to make sure Medicaid is covering it.

We’re not finding aid programs to help us with our finances. Turning to family isn’t much of an option. His grandfather has cancer, his mother has already declared bankruptcy and is working two jobs, and my mother, with her OCPD-inspired miserliness, isn’t about to give me much of anything.

Talking to my mom on the phone yesterday, I told her that I was applying for disability and told her for the first time that I’m mentally ill. As per usual, she showed no interest in hearing about it, learning about it, knowing any of the details, etc. Instead, she wanted to talk about how she disagrees with my sister, an adult, buying concert tickets and speculating about the supposed tawdriness of her personal life. This is very, very, very typical of my mom and why I didn’t bother telling her years ago that I was having problems. The difference now is my economic situation and preparing to beg for money / a loan.

It’s hard to think of myself as poor since my husband and I both grew up in lower to middle class families. While we’ve been living an extremely frugal lifestyle ever since we became a couple, it’s hard to think of ourselves as needing government assistance. We have college degrees. We were supposed to get jobs to cover our household expenses. The embarrassment of asking for help is long gone. On the bus yesterday, with my clunky “granny shopping cart,” a woman, unprompted, told me about a local food pantry. I thanked her and told her of one I knew. I guess I’m even starting to look poor.

The problem with government assistance is that it may never come, and even if it does, it’s probably far too late. The Chicago Housing Authority isn’t accepting applications, nevermind waitlisting.

Does anyone have any ideas on who we can call for help or what programs we can apply to?

Thanks for reading.