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Brittany

Photo by Tim Cope

Brittany is the mother of 18-month-old identical twins Addleigh and Kennedi.  She runs a church day care, and gets to work with children throughout the day.  However, Brittany’s twins get her extra love and care not only because they are hers, but because they both have medical conditions that cause seizures, muscle weakness, and developmental delays.  Neither Brittany nor her husband has health insurance through their jobs, so TennCare has been essential in caring for the twins’ special medical needs.  Around the girls’ first birthday, normally a time for celebration, the family was notified that the girls’ TennCare coverage would be discontinued. Brittany was afraid their family might “lose everything that we’d ever worked for.”  Brittany appealed the decision and called TJC for help.
 
TJC client advocates immediately recognized that the twins were still eligible for TennCare.  After a phone call from TJC to the Department of Human Services to correct the mistake, the girls’ TennCare was reinstated.

Brittany was overjoyed that her twin girls were protected.  As she says, “Addleigh and Kennedi are my greatest blessing.”  But she also wanted to ensure that all Tennessee children are protected from similar mistakes and oversights.  She worked with TJC to write a letter to TennCare, sharing the twins’ story as well as experiences of other families.  In response, TennCare described the new training it has implemented to improve the accuracy of eligibility screens.

In her fight for her twins’ care, Brittany also spoke for many other parents struggling to receive care for their children.  She said, “The thought of losing health insurance for my girls was terrifying.  TJC helped me solve a problem I had thought was insurmountable, and put my mind at ease.”  She continued, “I’m just a mom, and moms do whatever their kids need them to do.  I will continue to do what I can to help other families.”

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