Family Assistance Fund

The Family Assistance Fund provides aid to patients, their families or caregivers who demonstrate a need for financial assistance with daily, non-medical expenses. It provides help with everyday items such as grocery money, diapers, child-care costs, bus fares or long-distance phone bills.

The Fund was established in honor of Marion McCarty and Percy Randle, two of the Hutchinson Center's first patient champions.

McCarty was the Center's first social worker whose warmth left an indelible impression on hundreds of patients. McCarty's deep caring for patients and their families developed from her own experience as the mother of a Center patient. Her son, Steve, was transplanted in 1972 at the age of 13. Steve survived until 2003. McCarty passed away in 2005.

The Center established Pastoral Care as a department in 1986, hiring Randle as its first director. Randle, a Hutchinson Center bone marrow transplant survivor who sadly passed away in October 2008 due to complications of hepatitis, began as a volunteer chaplain who then went on to serve Center patients in his official capacity. The Pastoral Care program at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance remains one of the few programs in the nation that invests so many of its resources serving outpatients as well as inpatients.

Today, every transplant patient sees a social worker upon arrival and has an assessment done which includes questions about interest in being seen by a chaplain. Most of Pastoral Care's referrals for transplant patients stem from these assessments.

Marion and Percy's legacy of caring endures in the spirit of the Hutchinson Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance's commitment to doing everything possible to humanize the cancer care experience.

You can also direct your gift and donate in memory or honor of a loved one or special occasion.