Serving Uninsured Children
In 1985, before "the uninsured" became an issue, the Caring Foundation began to respond to the needs of uninsured children who were falling through the cracks of the health care system.
The Caring Program for Children was the first program of its kind in the nation, offering primary and preventive health care coverage to uninsured children from low-income families.
The Caring Program for Children was replicated throughout the United States, and became the model for Pennsylvania's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which was in turn a model for the federal CHIP program. Every year millions of uninsured children across the country receive health care coverage through CHIP.
Serving Grieving Children
Through the 1990s, Pennsylvania's CHIP program was able to cover more and more children. During that time, the Caring Foundation identified another need in the community that was not being met—that of grieving children and their families.
In 1996, the first groups of grieving children and families were offered peer support services through what would become known as the Highmark Caring Place, A Center for Grieving Children, Adolescents and Their Families. And on December 2, 1997, the first Caring Place facility opened its doors in downtown Pittsburgh.
As the Pittsburgh program continued to grow through partnerships with the community, both in the peer support groups, and out in the schools, workplaces and throughout the community, a second Caring Place facility opened its doors on May 1, 2001, in Erie, Pennsylvania.
On August 5, 2003, a third facility was dedicated in Lemoyne, just outside of Harrisburg.
And in 2009, a fourth facility will be opened in Warrendale, in the Cranberry region of western Pennsylvania.
Partnership with Schools: Caring Team for Children
From the beginning, the Highmark Caring Foundation has worked in partnership with the community to serve those in need. Tens of thousands of individuals and groups have donated time, energy and funds to help the Highmark Caring Foundation help uninsured children and adults, grieving children and their families, and children with special health care needs.
A special program of the Highmark Caring Place is the Caring Team for Children. The Caring Team is a unique partnership with area schools which raises awareness and support for children in need.
Begun in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1989, the Caring Team concept has proven so successful that it expanded to the Erie region in 2003, and to Central Pennsylvania in 2004.
The Caring Team is made up of nearly 300 schools from Western and Central Pennsylvania, along with Highmark, and different partners in each of the regions, including the Pittsburgh Steelers, Max & Erma’s Restaurant, Starbucks Coffee Company, Unique Limousine and WJET-TV.
Celebrity Co-Captains support the work of the schools through the Caring Team in the Pittsburgh, Erie and Harrisburg regions. Hines Ward, Super Bowl XL MVP, for example, is one of the Caring Team Co-Captains in southwestern Pennsylvania, while Flora Posteraro, news anchor at ABC-27, is Co-Captain in Central Pennsylvania, and one of Erie’s Co-Captains is WJET-TV news anchor Sean Lafferty. This outpouring of community support has helped thousands of children through the years, having raised more than $9.7 million, including matching funds from Highmark.Serving Children with Special Heath Care Needs
In 2004, the Highmark Caring Foundation scaled up what had been a pilot program in the 1980s, working with families of children with special health care needs. The first step was listening to families, physicians and other service providers, in order to learn more about the issues facing these families and their children.
The families reported limited coordination between all providers, while physicians reported not having adequate knowledge of the specific community support services available to the children. At the same time, community-based service providers reported on the lack of collaboration and communication among all of the systems working with the child and family.
After hearing the families, physicians and providers of care, the Highmark Caring Foundation developed the Caring Program: Care Coordination for Children with Special Health Care Needs and Their Families, an innovative program to address the issues faced by the children and their families.
At the heart of the Caring Program is care coordination—a process that links children with special health care needs and their families to services and resources in a coordinated way to maximize the children's health and quality of life.
The program has been so successful that the Pennsylvania Insurance Department has mandated similar coordination programs for all of its CHIP contractors, and Highmark itself has determined that the program could serve more children more efficiently by moving within Highmark, where the Caring Program continues to serve children in need.
Throughout its history, the Highmark Caring Foundation has continued to be a champion for children, working to identify unmet needs of children in our communities, and to create innovative programs to meet those needs.
