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.

Medical Play Dolls

The process of personalizing a blank, stuffed, body-shaped doll can provide children with a pleasurable and expressive activity which can be used by the child life team in many ways. Children decorate the dolls with non-toxic permanent markers. The dolls become a part of the treatment process and children take them home with them when they are discharged.

Child life specialists use the dolls to:

• Help develop rapport with children and help them relax in a hospital environment
• Help assess the child's perception and feelings about healthcare experiences - talking about the doll is a non-threatening way to explore the child's own concerns
• Help children prepare for and cope with their treatment process - the doll can be used to show such things as where an injection will be given or what posture/body position is desired
• Provide comfort items for children

Medical Play Dolls are used much like the Sock Monkey that helped teach Colleen about many of her procedures.

This information is extracted from an article entitled "The Use of Stuffed, Body-Outline Dolls with Hospitalized Children and Adolescents" by Laura Gaynard, Joy Goldberger, & Lesley Laidley, Children's Health Care, 1991, p.216-223.

We look for volunteer groups that will work to make the blank, medical play dolls for the local Pediatric Oncology Hospitals. Instructions for making the doll and a hopsital gown are shown below. If you are interested in volunteering your time and talent in this way, please contact us.

Medical Play Doll - Pattern and Instructions

Medical Play Doll Gown - Pattern and Instructions

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

The Beads of Courage Program

Beads of Courage 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.

Beads of Courage 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 beads 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