Wyoming cancer kids and their families face challenges unlike anywhere else in the nation. The limited financial, medical, and informational resources available in the state can leave many families crushed under the weight of enormous financial hardship and emotional stress. Jason's Friends aims to ease families' burdens, providing financial assistance, emotional support and information about childhood cancers to help families communicate more effectively with health care providers.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE
We understand that the families of cancer kids have an urgent need for financial assistance. Jason's Friends doesn't cover medical expenses—Children's Health Services or insurance do that. But we do help with many of the other costs which can prove to be overwhelming in the face of elevated medical bills. We pay for things like traveling expenses—gas, hotels, food, and airfare. We pay house payments, rent payments, electric bills, gas bills and water bills. We help keep vehicles running, help keep food on the tables and put clothes on the families' backs. We've even paid for funerals and burial plots. We've paid out as little as a few thousand for some families to over $30,000 for others.

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Each family helped by Jason's Friends is assigned a family advocate who is responsible for organizing the other volunteers in assisting with whatever help is needed and is the family's main contact with our foundation. They can also help the family find information about the child's illness and the help available through other agencies.

INFORMATION RESOURCES
Information gathering is another challenge for so many families. There is such a lack of knowledge on how to access information. So many of the families we deal with don't have skills it takes to navigate on the Internet and most don't own the technology to even make it possible. So many go into treatment not understanding the illness, therefore they can't even ask the right questions. Jason's Friends works with a number of groups that provide a good starting place for information about childhood cancers:

Candlelighters.org
1-800-366-CCCF
National non-profit organization whose mission is to educate, support, serve, and advocate for families of children with cancer, survivors of childhood cancer, and the professionals who care for them.

Cancer.gov
1-800-4-Cancer
The National Cancer Institute's website, providing access to the latest cancer research, statistics and information.