Rural Advocates for Independent Living, or RAIL as it’s more commonly known, is an organization based in Kirksville that covers 10 counties throughout northeast Missouri. Its goal is to help people with disabilities stay independent and in their communities.
They offer many services, including helping coordinate consumer directed services, independent living skills training, transition services, and more.
LaDonna Williams and Amy Green with RAIL spoke about one of their programs that is available to anyone in the community free of cost: the lending of durable medical equipment, or DME. This could include assistive tools, such as wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, hospital beds, etc.
For the month of July, we're focusing on the health of those living in Kirksville and the surrounding areas.
LaDonna Williams: Our goal is to keep people as independent as possible in the communities of their choice, to keep them at home – if that's where they choose to be, for as long as possible.
It's about being an independent person – whether that's being able to get up and move around the house on your own without somebody assisting you, or you having to wait on them.
Going to the restroom on your own, I mean, who wants to have somebody go in the restroom with them? So, being able to have a toilet safety frame or a stool riser or a grab bar, something like that, to help them remain independent, where they can go on their own.
That's what it's all about. That's what our lives are about – is remaining independent.
Amy Green: Absolutely.
LaDonna Williams: There is no physicians required. If it's just – all of a sudden one day, you wake up and you decide, “I'm unsteady on my feet,” “my knees are getting bad,” “my hip’s getting bad.” “I really could use that shower chair.”
Just, and also offering the different devices, whether it be a regular cane or a quad cane, or a regular walker or a rollator type walker.
We had a lady that came in one day and she had a walker, but it was broke, and she said, “I loaned my walker to somebody, and this is the way I get it back.”
So, we have walkers – lots of walkers, and so, we were able to give her one, and I said, “And you go tell your friends next time not to borrow yours to call us, and we can bring them one.”
So, you know, it's just that word of mouth is so so important to us.
Amy Green: And I don't know if we had said that we accept donated equipment. We have a drive, like a DME [durable medical equipment] drive once a year, but we will accept any kind of in good shape equipment.
Being able to tell people that kind of makes them feel better. You know, whenever I go to them and be like, “I can get you a shower chair. It was donated to us.”
So, we can give it right back out to the community, and it makes them feel better that they're not like taking advantage.
LaDonna Williams: And we always tell them, “And when you're done with it, return it, and we'll send it back out again.”
We have, in the past, gotten grants for some equipment. One of the fraternity organizations at Truman did a fundraiser for us one year, and that helped tremendously.
So, when we do our fundraisers, that's what we do – we take care of our consumers, whatever that may be.
