How Donors Impact our Children and Families

Courtney DiStefano is the Child Life Specialist Supervisor at Franciscan Hospital for Children. If you have questions related to our Child Life program, please call 617-254-3800 ext. 4770 or email info@fhfc.org. If you have questions about donations, please contact us at info@fhfc.org. To make a monetary donation, please click here.

With the holiday season barely in the rearview mirror many of us are more than ready to put the decorations away and put the crazy schedules, gift-giving, baking and family gatherings behind us. In the traditional sense the Season of Giving has ended, but here at Franciscan Hospital for Children we rely on the generosity of others year-round to provide compassionate care and education children in the greater New England region and beyond.

Hospitalization is an everyday reality for the children and families here, and their need for laughter, joy, play, and more extends beyond the holiday season. As a member of the Child Life team on our medical units, I work with our staff to decrease the impact of the stress of hospitalization on children.

We expend every effort to make sure that our patients’ days here are special, and that they are given every opportunity possible to continue to grow and develop as they would at home and in school. We do this by providing a variety of activities and interventions that help children through the challenges and realities that they face, using play as a motivator.

Many of these activities are funded through invaluable relationships with generous donors and corporate partners. As you read through our 2014 Ways to Give blog post, you may have wondered how your gifts directly impact the children and families that we serve.

To help illustrate just how important our relationships are with our donors, I’m providing you with five examples of interventions where funding and donations directly impact our children.

1. Prizes as a Motivator: Many of the patients on our inpatient medical units are undergoing difficult and sometimes painful rehabilitation therapies three to six times a day. It is hard as adults to remain motivated during these therapy sessions, never mind for our children who struggle to see or understand what they are working towards. To help children feel appreciated for their hard work, to keep them motivated, and to promote their healing, we create sticker charts and behavior plans so that children can receive prizes for accomplishing major goals along their rehab journeys. These prizes are often a gift from generous donors.

2. Developmental Play Group: Five days a week we run a developmental play group to work on the different goals of our current patient population. It could be making “wishing wells” with our older kids to help them talk about their dreams and their goals, or playing with light up toys with toddlers to help them understand cause-and-affect. Sometimes we even get messy and have the babies splash around with bath toys in buckets of water and learn from each other as they explore the materials. Where do the toys and craft supplies come from that makes these experiences possible? Partnerships and donations.

3. Gaming Rewards: When the kiddos are done with therapy and just want to relax, we take them in to the playroom for activities of their choice. Mario Kart and NBA basketball battles tend to be favorites, and help our kids to build friendships even in the midst of an inherently isolating environment. Currently, all of our gaming systems and games are a direct result of gifts from generous donors, and they’re used multiple times daily.

4. Soothing Babies: We often care for newborns with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). These infants have been exposed to drugs of some in utero, and therefore must stay in the hospital while doctors carefully wean them from their medication. These babies are often fussy from symptoms of withdrawal. In an effort to help keep them calm we provide them with sound soothers and mobiles to promote relaxation and comfort, along with a Moby Wrap. Moby Wraps enable our team to carry them whenever possible and give them the cuddles and contact that they so desperately need, and swaddles and weighted bean bags also help to relax their muscles when they are feeling the symptoms of withdrawal. All of these supports are available to us thanks to generous donations.

5. Isolation Activities: When children are on precautions that keep them from coming to more social activities like developmental play group, they are often isolated in their rooms until they can heal. In these cases, we bring all therapeutic activities to them. We do bedside art projects, play games, and have NBA battles of our own. Unfortunately, most of the toys and supplies we bring in to precaution rooms cannot be cleaned in a way that then allows us to use them again with other children. The only way we have enough materials to bring these activities to the children who need them most is through partnerships and donations.

We’re lucky enough to have incredibly generous corporate partners and individual donors who dedicate so much to supporting our efforts to provide these services to our children and families. Whether through annual holiday donations or communicating with us throughout the year to determine what our greatest needs are and delivering items accordingly, each donation has a place and a purpose with our children and families.

This year we received a PlayStation 4 gift, but nearly a month after receiving it the system hadn’t been used by the kids because we didn’t have any games to go with it. Our friends at Barton Associates reached out to ask what we were looking for, and we had an easy answer – PlayStation 4 games. Thanks to their quick and incredible response, our Teen Room was quickly filled with kids yelling with excitement over their first time ever playing Legos or FIFA [soccer] on a PS4!

My team and I will never forget that first afternoon that we played, because it had been a really difficult day for one of our patients. We brought him down to the Teen Room to play and help to take his mind off of things. After about 15 minutes of playing Legos with us he gave us the biggest smile we had seen on his face in a long time and said, “I’m so happy!”

Those are the kinds of memories and moments that your generosity creates, and those are the experiences that we wouldn’t be able to provide without the dedicated partnerships of the people and businesses that support us.

As we settle back into our post-holiday routines, please know that our staff, children and families are extremely thankful for the generosity of our donors – we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without you!

To learn more about the Heart in Hand Holiday Campaign, check out this piece by WERS radio, available on our YouTube channel.