Boutique offers hope at Omaha’s CHI Health Lakeside

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Employees at CHI Health Lakeside are working to build a better Omaha by helping patients in need.

They’ve created a “Boutique of Hope” that provides essentials including clothes, diapers, shoes free of charge.

Item by item Emma Rayne goes through the clothes, finding the perfect fit for her son Keoni. As a young single mom of a toddler, Rayne knows raising kids can cost a pretty penny.

Rayne said, “It’s definitely not cheap cause the diapers, they’re expensive, and if you do formula, that’s expensive too.”

The boutique is the brainchild of RN Clinic Lead Tasha Goracke and Dr. Lauren Anderson.

“It started off as an idea,” Goracke said. “We had a few patients come in and we recognized some kind of social barriers and some resources that we could try to offer patients on site. We were like, what could we do to kind of bridge the gap between seeing our patients right here in the clinic before they start meeting on the community level to get those resources outside of here.”

All the items are displayed in a patient room that has become the “Boutique of Hope.”

The necessities are donated by staff and community. A donation bin is located at the entrance of the clinic.

“We’re like, would you like to take a look at our boutique. If so, we give them the dignity, they could just go right in there, grab as many items as they need,” Goracke said.

Goracke said the boutique helps families in need and also provides the staff a little heart medicine.

“It’s so heartwarming to know that we’re able to help them. Just a small act of kindness or a little deed like that can go a long way for someone,” Goracke said.

Plans are in the works to create a “Boutique of Hope” at CHI Health Midlands.

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