Local Nonprofit Steps Up, Continues to Support Families

The Ronald McDonald House’s mission is to care and provide shelter for families in the days and months their children spend in local hospitals.

The house in Chapel Hill has been serving families seeking care at UNC hospitals since 1988 but, as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the nation, the nonprofit has undergone big changes to the way they run their day-to-day operations.

Heather Shanahan is the Executive Director of the Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill.

She said they’ve had to make a lot of changes to follow social distancing measures like moving all the families into the main building and closing all the common areas, including the kitchen.

“We are allowing families to eat in their rooms, we were able to get a refrigerator for every family to have in their room, we have a microwave up front at our guest services so if families need food heated up we can do that for them,” Shanahan said. “Then for dinners we line everyone up six feet apart and they come and collect their meal and then eat it back in their room.”

Shanahan said closing these common areas and only allowing families to eat in their rooms has been very difficult to watch.

“That’s really kind of painful from the perspective of so much about our mission is bringing families together in a time when they’re experiencing enormous difficulty with dealing with a child who is either ill or has an injury and so loosing that chance to come together to talk to other families who are going through the same experience to share, to share meals together, it’s been tough,” Shanahan said.

She said this pandemic, and the stressors that come with it in following health and safety protocols, is just one more hurdle for these families who are already dealing with having a sick child.

“We’ve seen some tears as you can imagine,” Shanahan said. “This is hard on everybody. You know, you add to that you’re dealing with your child who’s not doing well. That’s been hard but I would say they’ve been amazingly resilient, amazingly supportive – you know just understanding that all the decisions that we make right now are designed to keep everybody safe.”

Shanahan said while they have been keeping strong at the Ronald McDonald House, another unprecedented stressor is having to operate as normally as possible without the help of volunteers. In addition to following CDC guidelines, the Ronald McDonald House issued a global policy to have volunteers stay home.

Shanahan said this policy makes a lot of sense.

“A significant number of our volunteers do fall in the CDC guidelines in terms of being high-risk and so some folks had already made the decision to stay home on their own and then of course we had to take it to the next step there,” Shanahan said.

But while this policy is for the safety of everyone’s health, Shanahan said the house is definitely missing the volunteer’s presence.

“We typically have anywhere from 100 to 150 volunteers that make this place run,” Shanahan said. “They do everything from helping to clean rooms and do laundry and cook meals and clean out refrigerators. We’re definitely very reliant on our volunteer squad – and we just miss them to – they’re part of our community here.”

Shanahan said they’ve been doing the best they can in the safest way they can, even with a very limited staff. The Chapel Hill Ronald McDonald House had to immediately send home six of their 20 team members as they fell into the high-risk category – and while they’ve been doing their best to stagger the rest of the staff, it’s been rough.

“We had a lot of 10, 12, 13 hour days last week and I think most of us worked about 13 days straight so it’s been tough but we’re making it happen,” Shanahan said.

During this time, Shanahan said donations are always helpful as they try to keep their families well-fed in a clean environment. Cleaning supplies, paper towels, snacks and food items families can keep in their rooms are some of the most-needed donations.

For more information on the Chapel Hill Ronald McDonald House, and to donate to the House’s COVID-19 Response plan, visit their website.

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