Stories of accompaniment

In the health care system

Fools Mission accompanied a young man, who lives on roughly $400 a month, to an intake appointment at the Health Coverage Unit in San Mateo County. He was denied coverage the first time he applied for their health insurance program for indigent adults — but in the presence of a witness, all became clear. He needed to provide a statement that identified the sources of his income. He was enrolled in the MCE (Medicaid Coverage Expansion) program, and saw a doctor the same morning.

Years later, his coverage was suspended for reasons that weren’t clear to us. Another visit to the County revealed why: he had referred to himself as an “independent contractor” in his statement, which was an inadvertent misuse of legal terminology. We helped revise his statement to characterize him (correctly) as a “day laborer” instead, and his coverage was reinstated.

Over the years, Fools Mission has helped people connect with life-saving medications when Medi-Cal was unable to process prescriptions because a patient had moved across County lines. We’ve accompanied people to medical and dental appointments. In some cases, we’ve connected people with medical or dental care by leveraging social connections, despite their lack of insurance coverage.

In the court system

Fools Mission provided supportive companionship in a child custody case for a long-standing member of our community. The court wanted to see specific measures from the child’s mother, but it became clear that very little of her progress was getting into the record. Other Fools Mission members accompanied her at hearings, testified as character witnesses, and wrote a letter of support to a social work supervisor. We all breathed a sigh of relief when she eventually regained custody of three of her kids.

Six months went by without the mom seeing her youngest daughter, despite court-ordered visitations. Fools Mission stepped forward in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County to serve as a Non-Professional Provider of Supervised Visitations, and helped to mediate conflicts between the parents. The mom now sees her daughter on a regular basis, and the court has recognized Fools Mission at review hearings for its commitment to service. Her arduous quest to reunite her family continues to benefit from our accompaniment as we walk with her at hearings and write letters of support. Empowered by years of participation in the semi-monthly round tables where we share stories, this once-shy woman now participates in outreach events, publicly sharing her story of how our accompaniment helped her family. Her bilingual skills are a great benefit to us as she translates for others. At Fools Mission , the giver and the receiver become one.

In the school system

When an honor student at a local high school was accused of failing to meet residency requirements, we didn’t understand the basis for his pending expulsion, given that the family was paying rent to an uncle who lived in the school district so he could attend. Investigators tailed the family car as they went about their daily activities, and entered the uncle’s home to interrogate the children. Nine-year-old kids were asked questions like, “Where do you put your head down at night?” and “Whose toothbrush is this?” and “Why are his clothes in a bag on the floor instead of hung up in the closet?”

We scheduled a meeting with the Superintendent to try to make sense of the decision. It soon became clear that the family’s compliance was not being challenged as much as their lifestyle. In the meeting, we did the math demonstrating that anyone who earns $10/hour has to work 74–92 hours per week to pay the rent on an apartment in San Mateo County. Immigrant families like this one typically house seven or more extended family members in a small apartment to make a go of it — yet our explanation was greeted with blank stares, as if none of the educators in the room were aware of the struggles that low-income families face here.

The high school student was active in sports and music ensembles, and had a 3.5 grade point average. Occasionally, he slept at a different aunt’s house to get an extra hour of sleep before football practice. Nevertheless, his family lived in the district and paid rent there. The first casualty of the decision was that the family had to move out of the uncle’s apartment. (Undocumented immigrants typically want to stay in the shadows, and further visits from investigators were out of the question.) Subsequently, the family found another apartment within the school district, and the student was reinstated at his school. And because of our accompaniment and advocacy, his exile lasted only six months instead of the usual full year.

Our accompaniment was a significant source of support for the family, who appeared to be as upset about the accusation of “lying” as they were about the expulsion itself. A few weeks after the experience, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich published an article, Patrolling the Boundaries Inside America, that revealed our story to be part of a national trend.