RivBuddies: Giving Kids with Special Needs (and their Parents) a Helping Hand

By Laura Granger

[intro]About eight years ago, my husband, James Granger, and I asked several of our college and community friends if they would be willing to pair up one-on-one with our son, Jay, in the RivKids classroom on Sunday mornings.[/intro]

Jay has a mild form of autism and ADHD. He usually zoned out and didn’t participate during RivKids. We wanted Jay to get more out of his Sunday church experience. We thought with an adult working with him one-on-one while in his class, he would be more engaged and take something away from his experience. Soon we had half a dozen or so volunteers who began supporting and encouraging Jay in his class on Sunday mornings.

I was so gratefully amazed when after his first Sunday with a one-on-one helper, he could tell me what they talked about in class and even had a craft project to give me. This was an incredible encouragement to me as his mom!

At that time I was also involved in a support group for parents of children with autism. I knew of at least a few families that did not attend church, even though they would have liked to, because the children’s ministry simply could not give their child the support he or she needed in their Sunday school classes. One family went to church regularly but one of the parents always stayed with their son in his class while the other attended the adult church service. Another family told me that they were asked not to bring their twin autistic boys back to church because the children’s ministry could not handle or accommodate them. God showed me the need and began to lay on my heart the desire to provide the one-on-one support to other families of children with special needs so they could attend church on the weekends.

Supporting Kids with Special Needs…and their Families

In the spring of 2009, we began our RivBuddies ministry for families of children with special needs. Within a few months there were 3-5 families utilizing RivBuddies and over a dozen trained volunteers to work one-on-one with these children in their RivKids classroom. One family, who had not attended church since their autistic child was born, began coming to Riverview regularly. The family who had spent years with one parent in the service and one parent with their autistic son were thrilled the first time they were able to sit together during a Sunday service. Now their entire family (parents and three children) could all attend church together.

A few years later a family contacted me about RivBuddies for their son with special needs. Through this they became members of Riverview and his mother headed up RivKids for a few years. Recently, another couple shared how Riverview helped to reunite them when their marriage was on the brink of divorce. One of their children has a RivBuddy every Sunday; otherwise the family could not attend church. None of this could have happened without the RivBuddies ministry.

Needed: Kids (and Parents) Who Need a Hand

For the first time since our ministry began, we actually have more volunteers than we need. If you know of any families who may be interested in utilizing RivBuddies, please have them contact me, Laura Granger, through [email protected].

My vision (that God gave me) is to continue to support families of children with special needs so they can fully participate in the Body of Christ at Riverview.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. – 1 Corinthians 12:21-26

Image Credit: Alex