UAMS Family Home Marks 10-year Milestone

By Nate Hinkel

Barbara Reed, UAMS Family Home house manager, and Robin Dean, Cancer Support Center coordinator, celebrate the home's 10th anniversary.
Barbara Reed, UAMS Family Home house manager, and Robin Dean, Cancer Support Center coordinator, celebrate the home’s 10th anniversary.

| Among the board members gathered for the celebration were (left to right) Chad Pekron, Doll Wilkins, Greg Ramer, Margaret Faulkner and Rezy Mobarak.
Among the board members gathered for the celebration were (left to right) Chad Pekron, Doll Wilkins, Greg Ramer, Margaret Faulkner and Rezy Mobarak.

 

May 9, 2013 | For 10 years, the UAMS Family Home has been a home-away-from-home for patients at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. On May 8, friends gathered to celebrate the home’s first decade and pledge support for the start of its second.

“This is truly a milestone day. We’re so proud to still be here, serving the patients who need us,” said Robin Dean, coordinator of the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Auxiliary Cancer Support Center, which is housed at the home.

The UAMS Family Home is a private, nonprofit facility located directly across Markham Street from campus. It is operated by the board of Parents and Friends of Children and Adults, Inc. with the mission of providing affordable lodging in a home-like setting for cancer patients and parents of premature infants being cared for at the UAMS hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. Cost to stay at the home is $10 per night.

The spacious 13,500-square-foot house has two guest wings: one with a kitchen, laundry, and five bedrooms and baths for parents of infants in the NICU and the other with two kitchens, laundry, and 10 bedrooms and baths for UAMS cancer patients and their caregivers.

Common areas are available to residents include a covered porch, garden, great room, meditation room and activities room. Barbara Reed serves as live-in house manager.

Board member Doll Wilkins has been involved with the home since it was founded in 2003 and has a personal commitment to its mission.

“I’ve been privileged to meet so many of the residents who have stayed here over the years; I’ve taken them to dinner and had them in my home. It’s that personal connection that helps them get through this difficult time in their lives,” Wilkins said.

To stay at the UAMS Family Home, cancer patients must be receiving outpatient treatment at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and live outside a 50-mile radius of Little Rock. To stay in the neonatal wing, parents must have a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit at UAMS. All guests must be referred by a UAMS social worker.