4/6 CHP Child Life Meeting
On Friday, we had a Zoom meeting with Stephanie, the Child Life, Volunteer Services, and Family Resource Center Manager at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Alanna, the Child Life Department’s Representative at the Hospital’s Green Team.
We prepared a list of questions asking about activities, programs, resources, and pitched them both of our ideas.
What kind of programs or activities you are already doing in the family resource space?
How are they structured?
What is the most common age group for the participants?
We are aware that you already have an ongoing partnership with the museum, and the program is called “Museum on the move,” can you tell us more about the collaboration?
What is your long-term vision for the patient programs?
What activities do you have for older kids age range 8–12?
For these kids, which activities do they find particularly interesting?
We have an idea about a board game for 8–12 and we want to know if it is possible to happen in the space? What health concerns would you have?
How likely is it for sick children who stay in the hospital to interact with other patients to play games?
From this meeting we learned that the maker space that we were interested is a collaboration between the hospital and Children’s Museum scheduled to be completed in ten weeks. We also found out that the age range of visitors and siblings change so often that it’s hard to make a judgement based off of that. There is also a teen lounge for those 12+ years old. The hospital also has groups coming through that run activities such as music group and art therapy.
The most promising thing that we found out from this meeting is that the green team has plans to develop a green space outside the cafeteria in the next month or so dedicated to planting vegetables and educating patients about sustainability. Phipps is helping to design the vegetation garden space and hope to provide continuing education there. The long-term goal is to grow enough produce to include in the meals in the cafeteria. Sadly due to sanitation reasons and it being an infection risk, patients are unable to help out with the planting themselves. There is also the Howard Hanna Healing Garden which currently exists in the Children’s Hospital. It has vegetation and trees but appears more to be a relaxation space rather than a growing space.
One other thing we discovered is that the hospital has plans to get rid of all their board games soon due to sanitation issues and being unable to clean boards properly. Since one of our ideas is a board game, this will mean we’ll have to come up with a solution that allows the game to be cleaned but doesn’t involve generating lots of waste in the process.
