CareWell Services operates on a foundation of five core values, among these core values are integrity, respect, and compassion. Each employee has committed to these values as we work together to carry out our mission of promoting health, independence, and choice for seniors, persons with disabilities, and caregivers. We seek to create a community where people are cared for with dignity and respect.
Our service area covers eight counties in southwest Michigan. These communities are diverse and unique, ranging from very rural to metropolitan areas; shoreline communities to farmland; economically above standard to far below poverty. Our participants are as diverse as our communities not only in terms of where they live, but also their backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, and life stories.
We have been heartbroken by the recent senseless deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd. We pause to remember these three and those who have suffered the same brutality at the hand of someone in power, in recent times as well as in the years in which many of our participants came of age in America. We consider the many law enforcement members, some with whom we work closely in areas such as elder abuse prevention, who have stood up, stood out, and stood firm in decrying the atrocious actions of their brethren that has cast an elongated shadow on their commitment to serve and protect. We recall the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifices of some of those we now serve, who are too frail to protest now or those who have fought similar battles over their lifetime. We pause, but our pause is not enough. People like Lamar Smith, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Violet Liuzza, and of course, Dr. King sacrificed everything in the 1960s to be able to say that the United States was a just, equitable, and peaceful nation. The battle they fought continues to rage and each of us has responsibility to take up this banner so that in another 20 or 30 years we aren’t continuing to see the unjust deaths of others like George, Armaud and Breonna.
In 1965, when the Older Americans Act was first enacted, it was also justice seekers who raised the banner against disparities that existed for older Americans – the same older Americans who had fought our wars but were then left without support, without health care and without consideration of their needs. Like then, we continue to stand in solidarity with those seeking a more just society and condemn any act that brings harm, discriminates or widens disparities for people of color and others who are marginalized.
CareWell Services is an agency born from the Older Americans Act, charged to serve our most vulnerable and to advocate in our community when injustice is present and to speak for those whose voice is not heard. In this role, our commitment is to continually push ourselves, and those in positions of authority in our community, to listen, to hear, to be vulnerable and claim responsibility in those areas where we fall short, and to do better for our community. To those who are now walking ahead of us we say boldly and without reservation we see you, we thank you, we cry with you, and we stand in solidarity.
