ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Legal residents of the District of Columbia, Montgomery County, MD, Prince George’s County, MD, Fairfax County, VA, Arlington County, VA, and the city of Alexandria, VA will be eligible to receive program awards. Other than living in these areas , there are two kinds of eligibility—income and disability.

Income Eligibility

Income eligibility is based on family income and the number of people in your family. Please look at the table below. In the first column, find the number of people in your family. Then look at the dollar amount next to that. If you do not have more income than the column on the right (next to the number of people in your family), your child is eligible to apply.

Disability Eligibility

To be eligible for this program, a child must be 21 years or younger, with:

• Mental retardation
• Hearing impairments (including deafness)
• Speech or language impairments
• Visual impairments (including blindness)
• Serious emotional disturbance
• Orthopedic impairments
• Autism
• Traumatic brain injury, or
• Other health-experiencing developmental delays, as measured by appropriate diagnostic instruments and procedures, in one or more of the following areas: physical development, cognitive development, communication development, social or emotional development, or adaptive development; and who, by reason thereof, needs special education and/or health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally.

You must provide proof of both income and disability eligibility in order to be considered for the award . Please get copies of at least one of the items listed in the Income column and one from the Disability column. Attach the copies to your application. (You can send more than one from each column if you want.) Here is the proof you can use.

The purpose of the Dose of Kindness Program is to enrich the lives of children with special health care needs from eligible families in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The Program provides goods and services that are usually not available from public service and government agencies. They are not covered by Medicaid or private insurance either. This may include computers, arts and sports equipment, home modifications, communications and transportation devices, and other goods and services not considered “medically necessary.”

As a life enrichment program, the Dose of Kindness Program does not fund “life necessity” goods and services. For example, the program does not generally fund food, clothing, medicine, direct medical service, or housing. If you have questions about what is eligible for funding, please call 1-800-DC YOUTH (1-800-329-6884) and leave a message. Your call will be returned.