Innovation and Helping People in Need

For decades we at Sweeten Life Systems has been on the cutting edge of developing creative and cost effective ways to care, counsel and support needy people. I did a Doctoral Research study in 1975 on ways to train Pastors and their Lay People to provide care for the elderly, shut ins, people with serious diseases and those suffering from depression, anxiety and other emotional distress.

The results have been extremely innovative and have spread virally around the world, especially areas that are too poor to pay for Professional Medical and Psychological assistance. We did this by analyzing carefully the felt needs of average families and developing assessments to differentiate those that need Professional help from those who Can benefit most from Peer and Para-Professional Support. In other words, who could benefit most from free First Aid types of assistance and who needed expensive Professional Care?

One reason that Medical costs are soaring is because so many people who could benefit greatly from a free or low cost visit with a well trained First Aid Worker go instead to a very costly, highly trained and much in demand Professional Doctor, Nurse, Psychologist or Psychiatrist and are given very costly medications.

My plan does not neglect or fight against seeing a highly trained Professional. I am one myself, and I founded an in-patient hospital unit and still oversee a large outpatient clinic staffed with Psychiatrists, Counselors and Nurses. We have seen wonderful healings and changes over the years but not everyone that is hurting can afford to see a Professional not needs to see one.

What I have done in a large Cincinnati church and expanded to the USA and the world through my not for profits is to teach others how to do the assessments to discover which persons need and can afford Professional Helper and who could benefit from seeing a Peer Helper. Then we teach them how to serve those people with effectiveness. In this way we greatly expand the number of Helpers who are skilled in "Psychological First Aid" expanding rare Care and Counsel to thousands of needy people who rarely if ever get any emotional and spiritual support from anyone.

Few persons in Third World countries can find or afford or need a Professional Helper. If we waited to care until a Psychologist/Social Worker/Counselor was well trained and available free, help would never arrive. I received emails and letters weekly from the far flung regions of the world telling me how much they have learned, grown and benefited from our ministry.

Since we teach "Each equipping center to reach one more equipping center we have great, great grand children we have never met training Peer Care Givers to expand and train others. We are using the cutting edge research processes used so effectively by P&G to find out what people's needs are and what to do to help them.

We put that together with the command Jesus gave just before He rose into heaven to "Go make disciples of every nation". His methods are our methods and they work because He came to "Heal the broken hearted and set the captives free" and to do that we need millions of disciples/students.