How We're Helping

Education

Striving for More seeks to reshape attitudes to recognize psychological and emotional support as an integral part of cancer care.  Education is a key component of all we do.  We welcome the opportunity to speak at events in order to raise public awareness. If you are interested in making arrangments to have our founder, Diane Moore, speak at one of your events, please contact us.

Funding

Our organization does not provide any direct patient services. We believe that the oncology hospitals that are currently working with the children should be supported fully to allow them to provde high quality emotional support services. Therefore, we raise money that we can then pass onto the hospitals in the form of directed gifts or grants. Along with the funding, we also share information about quality emotional support programs that have been proven successful at other pediatric oncology hospitals. Programs being considered for 2010 funding include:

Child Life Specialists

Community Outreach Child Life Specialist

Funds would help us coordinate outpatient support activities such as support groups, camps, family programs and school re-entry.

Shadow Buddies Program

Shadow Buddies are dolls used by the Child Life Specialist to prepare kids for what will happen. If the child will get an injection, the doll gets one. If the child will get a bandage, the doll gets one, too. The "Cancer Buddy" has thinning hair, a surgical mask like the one cancer patients wear to protect them from germs, and a catheter in the chest for radiation and chemotherapy treatments. The Shadow Buddies are used much like the sock monkey that helped teach Colleen about many of her procedures.

Additional Child Life Therapy Resources

Additional resources would ensure a dedicated Child Life Specialist for pediatric oncology children.

Pediatric Oncology Social Workers

Social workers currently carry extremely heavy case management workloads. Our program would fund support resources, allowing them to provide clinical talk therapy for the children and their families.

Support Groups

This program would fund inpatient and outpatient support groups for children and parents, as well as a special group for adolescents and their parents. We also would provide end-of-life bereavement support programs

Pastoral Care

Resources would ensure both inpatient and outpatient pastoral care for children with cancer.

Other

Courage Bead Program

Courage Beads are designed to let children with cancer commemorate their personal cancer journey. Every time a child has a procedure—whether a chemotherapy infusion, radiation therapy, bone marrow aspirate, blood transfusion or other procedures—they receive a special bead from a member of the medical team to add to their “courage bead necklace.” Each bead represents a specific treatment:  a red heart bead for a blood transfusion, for example.

Hero Beads demonstrate a child’s strengths and accomplishments. Each child’s unique necklace can help friends, schoolmates and extended family members better understand what he or she has gone through. Parents may also want to wear the necklace to work as a way of sharing their child’s cancer journey with colleagues.

Patient and Caregiver Support Materials

Our resources could provide materials for patient/caregiver education and support.

Art / Music Therapy

We would provide funds for art and/or music programs, proven to be therapeutic for children in stressful situations