We always want to provide the best for our kids, but somehow, the pressure is even greater when our kids have special needs. Of course, there are direct costs, such as the need for medical equipment to make their lives easier, but we also want to provide them with happy memories to at least partly make up for the tough times they experience at a very young age.
Fortunately, there’s no need to feel all alone. There are some marvellous organizations out there that really want to help. Why not give them an opportunity to do so? Are you managing just fine on your own? Consider donating to these worthy causes instead.
For this list, we’ll cover all the names of organizations providing medical aid, therapy help or even scholarships for college students – we can find, but do ask medical staff about local non-profits, and feel free to share the names of any organizations that have been of help to your family.
In this guide...
Travel Help
- Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Alex’s funds pediatric cancer research, but it also helps out families who need to travel to get treatment.
- Angel Flight: A group of pilots volunteers their services to fly families in need to places where they can get necessary medical care they couldn’t otherwise have accessed.
- Autism Escapes: This non-profit isn’t just for kids with autism. If you need to travel by air to get therapy for your special needs child, find out whether they can help.
- Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Foundation: When kids have to be treated far from home, parents often struggle to find affordable accommodation. If your child needs to get care from the John Hopkins Children’s center, you can get a free stay. There’s even a beach house for families of special needs kids who need but can’t afford a break.
- J Kiffin Penry Patient Travel Assistance Fund: When all your funds run out and you still need to travel get epilepsy care, a grant could be the answer.
- The National Children’s Cancer Society: When your budget won’t stretch to accommodate travel needs, the NCCS can cover your child’s travel costs.
- Free Charity Cars: You really can get a car for free. This organization helps struggling families to get wheels.
- 1800 Charity Cars: Caring citizens donate cars to help people in need. When you have to take an ill child for regular therapy, a car is an absolute must-have.
- Online Car Donation: If you are struggling to take care of your family and your special needs child because you lack transport, get in touch with people who are there to help.
- Various local charities with car donation programs: There are many small, local car donation charities. Find out what’s available in your area if you’re in a bind because of transport.
Therapy Tools and Mobility Aids
- Ben’s Blankets: When your child needs a weighted blanket because of a sensory disorder, the price can be high. Volunteer seamstresses will make custom blankets for kids in need at the cost of the materials used.
- Challenged Athletes Foundation: CAF helps challenged athletes with special sporting equipment.
- Chelsea Hutchison Foundation: After losing their otherwise healthy daughter to an epileptic seizure, Chelsea’s family started a foundation to help kids with epilepsy get assistance dogs and life-saving movement monitors.
- Coping with Laryngomalacia: This organization provides unlimited online support, local meet-ups and care packages to babies with airway disorders. The care package includes a hand knit blanket (so babies can be wrapped with love), a hand knit hat, pajamas, toiletries for parents, a few books, and a toy for the hospital stay.
- ELKS Therapy: The Washington and Florida branches of the ELKS help kids in need to get therapy at home.
- Feeding Tube Awareness: Partners up with medical organizations and clinics that provide free feeding g-tubes belts and pads to any child that requires one. The charity is run by parents volunteers that will become like a second family to yours.
- FODAC: Free or low-cost wheelchairs, vehicle modifications, and home modifications go a long way towards helping movement impaired children get quality of life.
- Friends of Man: Getting mobility equipment or a prosthesis can be extremely costly unless you get help. You will need help from a medical professional or social worker when completing your application.
- Holton’s Heroes: Children who have suffered a post-birth brain injury and their families can benefit from the help, support and therapy tools provided by Holton’s Heroes.
- iPads for Apraxia: Research suggests that iPads can help kids with apraxia. If your family wants to try and can’t afford one, this organization might be able to help out.
- McLindon Family Foundation: Special bikes for special kids allow them to have fun just like anyone else.
- MIRA Foundation: Having a guide dog makes a world of difference to blind kids. This foundation helps them get a canine helper.
- Miracle Ear Foundation: A hearing aid helps hearing-impaired kids and adults participate in normal living. It’s like a miracle, and with this foundation, the miracle comes for free.
- MPS Society: Provides free support for children affected by this disorder.
- My Gym Foundation: Get help with medical equipment and mobility aids.
- Project Mend: A refurbished mobility device could be the answer to your prayers. The volunteers at Project Mend help people of all ages to get mobile.
- Ramps.org: Provides the necessary help for kids that need a ramp to move from a home to the outside. The website also includes a map with different areas where you can find the help for building a ramp.
- Service Dogs: Besides the fact that they provide and struggle to train all the dogs to be ready to handle any disability the human might have, including autism and blindness, the service may ask for a small fee to keep the dogs trained and ready for friendship, companionship, unconventional, and unconditional love for the child.
- Stepping Stones for Stella: Every kid should be able to go to the beach or play in the snow, but regular mobility aids don’t do well in those conditions. However, the ones made by this non-profit will! Hundreds have already been made and donated.
- Shriners Orthotics and Prosthetics: Shriners Childrens Hospitals help people who need orthotics or prosthetics to get the devices they need.
- The Arya Foundation: Mobility aids and even special seats or ramps help disabled kids enjoy living at home. Talk to the Arya Foundation about your child’s needs.
- The Danny Did Foundation: Seizure detection devices can save lives, but they’re not covered by insurance. A wonderful foundation and epilepsy community can get one for your child.
- The HIKE Fund: When kids need hearing aids, HIKE steps into the breach.
- The Miracle League: firstly started in Conyers, Georgia sand spread to Alabama, West Virginia, Illinois, and California, the organization offers the opportunity for kids with special needs to play baseball and have fun on a custom-designed field.
- Two Angels Foundation: Sometimes, kids just want to be able to join the fun and go to school like other kids. Adaptive equipment helps, and this foundation helps kids to get the equipment they need.
- Weighted Comfort for Kids: Provides sensory comfort and relief for autistic kids. You can request a free-weighted blanket and lap pad for your child online.
- Wheelchairs 4 Kids: If you’re struggling to provide a wheelchair for your little one, let others help you.
- Wheel to Walk Foundation: Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California kids needing anything from leg braces to therapy trikes from this wonderful foundation.
Financial Assistance
- Alyssa V. Phillips Foundation: Even if you don’t need help with funding cerebral palsy treatments your insurance doesn’t cover, this foundation will help you to gain a better understanding of cerebral palsy and how to care for children with this condition.
- Aubrey Rose Foundation: Poor little Aubrey Rose had a short life, but she is still making a positive impact. Help with medical expenses for families with ill children is just one of the things her foundation provides.
- Aubrey’s Warriors Foundation: The mom of a special needs daughter founded this organization to help families with kids whose needs strain their budgets.
- Be Perfect Foundation: Paralysis isn’t easy to deal with. This organization provides counseling, legal help, and financial aid to the families of those living with paralysis.
- Bryan’s Dream Foundation: When kids need costly medical treatments families often find themselves struggling. Bryan’s Dream issues several grants every year to help families with treatment costs.
- Building Blocks for Kids: Whether it’s paying for treatments or helping with home modifications to make your child’s life easier, this organization does all it can to make things easier for you.
- Cancer Care: Cancer Care doesn’t only help kids with cancer, they help when mom or dad need assistance too.
- Different Needz Foundation: Families of kids with developmental disorders can get the help they need here.
- Eden’s Hope: The families of kids with neuroblastoma have great financial burdens to bear. Eden’s hope does what it can to help in your hour of need.
- Family Reach: Help kids with cancer through Family Reach, or apply for help if you are struggling to cover your child’s medical costs.
- First Hand Foundation: Medical insurance only covers so much. When all other avenues are exhausted, first-hand helps with medical and transport expenses.
- Fred’s Footsteps: When kids are ill or injured, a foundation commemorating the life of a generous entrepreneur steps in.
- Generation Rescue: The families of autistic children can get funding for therapy with the help of this worthy organization.
- Gia Nicole Angel Foundation: Kids with physical disabilities have costly needs. This foundation wants to make a difference.
- Grotto Humanitarian Foundation: When kids have special needs, caring for their teeth can be hard to do. If you’re struggling to afford dental care, this foundation will help to keep your special child’s smile bright.
- Gwendolyn Strong Foundation: Spinal Muscular Atrophy is less rare than we’d like it to be! This organization raises funds for research – and helps families whose insurance doesn’t cover their SMA care needs.
- Hands to Angels: What could be more tragic than discovering your child has a rare genetic disorder? The parents of one such little boy have started a foundation to help other families in this situation.
- Hannah and Friends: Kids and adults with special needs in Indiana, the Michiana area, New York, Rhode Island, and Florida could qualify for quality of life grants from Hannah and Friends.
- June Brandy Foundation: Whether kids are ill or disabled, the June Brandy foundation reaches out.
- June Jessee Memorial Foundation: If you live in the St. Louis area and have a child with special medical needs, just getting good advice is worth gold. Whether you just want sound advice or need financial assistance, this might be the organization you’re looking for.
- Kya’s Krusade: Even if you don’t need financial help, having a caring community of parents who are in a similar situation to you is important – and if you need financial help, the community will do its best.
- Maggie Welby Foundation: Grants and scholarships are offered in memory of a little girl who never had the chance to grow up.
- Mark’s Money: If you live in Tennessee or Indiana, are struggling to keep your head above the water financially, and your child has Down Syndrome, Mark’s Money could see you through.
- Matthew Larson Foundation: The families of kids who have brain tumors can get financial assistance here.
- Modest Needs: When we’re down on our luck, a little help may be all we need.
- Molly Bear Foundation: Trisomy 18 is a rare disorder. Those who loved a little girl with T18 started this funding organization to help families with needs their insurance won’t cover.
- My GOAL Inc: Kids with autism spectrum disorders need to socialize too. Socialization and interactive therapy programs may be costly and far from home. My GOAL helps you get on programs you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.
- Needy Meds: If your income is low and your medical costs are high, getting cheap, free or discounted meds can literally be a lifesaver.
- Parker Lee Project: When your insurance doesn’t cover your child’s needs, you needn’t despair.
- Ray Tye Medical Foundation: There really are cases in which people can’t afford life-saving surgery for their kids. This memorial foundation has helped to save kids’ lives when they need surgeries that parents can’t afford.
- Ride to Give: A group of cyclists have turned their sport into a great way to raise funds for those in need of medical help.
- Small Steps in Speech: Speech and language disorders call for therapy. If you can’t afford it, Small Steps in Speech will do its best to help.
- Snap4Kids: Like so many of the wonderful organizations that help special needs kids, this one is run by parents like you. They don’t have a lot of resources, but if they can help, they will.
Extras
So far, we’ve mainly looked at organizations that supply absolute necessities, but there are also those that are willing to treat your child. We won’t provide a comprehensive list here, because there are simply too many, but we will add a few cute ones.
- Icing Smiles: Volunteers around the US are willing to bake cakes for special needs kids when they reach special milestones like birthdays.
- Camp Boggy Creek: This holiday camp offers “serious fun” for special needs kids and their families.
- Deliver the Dream: Offers free family trips that will occur in a special place every time just to make your child experience amazing and fun things. Each retreat is made for a specific illness such as autism, spina bifida, Down syndrome and cancer.
- Feel Better Friends: Caring volunteers produce beautiful handmade cuddly dolls to provide comfort to children with medical problems.
- The M.O.R.G.A.N. Project: Provides fun and therapeutic experiences to any child with disabilities.
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