When a family learns of a child’s diagnosis, the first place they may turn to is Google. Suddenly they are faced with endless amounts of information that can be difficult to navigate. Thankfully, because of generous donor support, the Family and Community Resource Centre (FCRC) is a hub at the hospital that offers credible information and resources to help families adjust to their new reality and learn about their child’s condition. In addition to providing connections to health and community resources, the FCRC also offers family peer support, translation services, recreational toys and books for kids as well as technology for children in hospital through the Child and Youth Interactive Media Program (CHIMP).

The Goal: To ensure all children and families have access to the information, technology and people that support care and decision-making.

In 2023-24: A customer satisfaction survey showed there was room for improvement in the sign-out process for books and library resources. In response, the library created an automated self sign-out system. Since then, book sign-outs have increased and feedback from families and staff has been positive!

Every year, tens of thousands of families suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar territory when they suddenly need the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Their world is turned upside down as they face medical language, complicated equipment and uncertainty worrying about their child’s health. It’s a time that can be stressful, intimidating and often overwhelming. Thankfully, because of donors like you, the Alberta Children’s Hospital offers special programs and services to support and empower families and lessen the stress that can accompany hospitalization. Highlights of this type of support include the Special Children’s Fund, which provides financial relief for things like food, gas, parking and accommodation; Video Remote Interpretation services to assist the diverse populations cared for by experts at the Alberta Children’s Hospital; and Emily’s Backyard, which provides free child-minding service for patients and siblings.

The Goal: To ensure all families get the wrap-around support they need to help manage a child’s health journey.

In 2023-24: With rising inflation and economic pressures mounting, families in our community relied on the Special Children’s Fund more than ever before. More than 4,500 requests for help were answered, resulting in more than $400,000 in relief for parents already navigating very difficult health journeys with their kids at the Alberta Children’s Hospital and at The Summit: Marian and Jim Sinneave Centre for Youth Resilience.

Long hospital stays can weigh heavy on young patients, which is why specialists at the Alberta Children’s Hospital work with kids to find a release valve for the pressures that can build. These include the Beads of Courage program, Music Therapy, Art Therapy, Horticulture Therapy, special events and more – all designed to support physical, mental and emotional healing while providing a fun distraction and social interaction for kids during their time in or at the hospital.

The Goal: To support the physical, mental and emotional healing of all kids and to reduce the anxiety and potential trauma that can be associated with serious sickness and injury.

In 2023-24: Art therapists began supporting kids at The Summit: Marian & Jim Sinneave Centre for Youth Resilience with weekly group sessions and individual sessions offered to kids receiving care in Tallman Family Treatment Services and in the Ptarmigan Day Hospital. Sixty-one group sessions were offered, allowing hundreds of kids the opportunity to let their creativity and artistry shine.

You can read more about how your support of Patient and Family Centred Care changes lives every day at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

Critical illness or injury are not confined to the Calgary area. Children throughout Alberta, southeastern British Columbia and southwestern Saskatchewan face life-threatening health crises, too. For those living in rural centres without immediate access to expert pediatric care, the Pediatric Critical Care Transport (PCCT) Team from the Alberta Children’s Hospital is their lifeline. Created in 2012 thanks to donations from the community, the Transport team is comprised of critical care physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists who work together like a mobile ICU unit, providing life-saving care during emergency transports by ground or air. In addition to longer distance transports, the team is also called upon to keep severely sick or injured children safe when they need to be transferred to other areas of the hospital.

The Goal: To provide highly specialized care for critically ill or injured pediatric patients requiring emergent or urgent transportation to the Alberta Children’s Hospital, while improving outcomes and reducing mortality, and to support and disseminate pediatric critical care knowledge and education to hospital Emergency Departments, especially in rural communities, by providing in-person and virtual training.

In 2023-24: The Pediatric Critical Care Transport team safely and successfully transported 275 kids to and from the Alberta Children’s Hospital so they could get the expert pediatric care they needed. A new staffing model and scheduling changes helped this specialized team achieve zero missed calls, meaning they were able to respond every time they were called on to transport a child by ground or air.  They also saw an improvement in response times, with the team able to respond to 54 transports in 30 minutes or less, compared to 16 in 2022-23.

Did You Know? Donors have generously supported the program by helping to purchase new equipment through fundraising events like the Country 105 Caring for Kids Radiothon, and, more recently, helped with staffing support in the form of a Transport Coordinator.

Located next door to the Alberta Children’s Hospital, Rotary Flames House is one of only six pediatric hospices in Canada and the only one in Alberta.

Modeled after a two-storey home, it is designed to be a place of sanctuary for families and children. Care is provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week by a team of trained healthcare professionals committed to ensuring that each child and family’s physical, developmental, emotional, spiritual and cultural needs are met in a sensitive and compassionate manner. Community donations support services that include respite care, end-of-life care, symptom management, transition care, grief support and bereavement care.

The Goal: To be a home away from home for medically complex children, where they can enjoy fun experiences and special programming tailored to them while their parents rest and recharge. It’s also a place of comfort for parents treasuring final moments with a child and where they can gather with others grieving unimaginable losses, all while surrounded by supportive and loving caregivers.

In 2023-24: Work continued on a Quality Improvement project launched in 2022-23 to help standardize services among pediatric hospices and palliative care centres in Canada. This work included key hirings and the establishment of a family advisory committee to gather valuable feedback from parents who use its services. The Rotary Flames House also increased the number of respite beds from five to seven, allowing more families to rest and recharge knowing their medically complex child is happy and safe at the house. In summer of 2024, the team expanded its therapeutic programming to include weekends. Children and families had the opportunity to participate in dance groups, music therapy, horticultural therapy, and field trips to attractions like the Bow Habitat Station and Calgary Zoo.

Current therapies for cancer, as well as life-threatening blood and immune disorders, can be incredibly taxing – both physically and mentally – on children and their families. To help ease some of their hardship, community support enables specialists to provide a whole new level of family centred care through Hospital at Home – the first program of its kind for children in Canada. This service sends specially trained nurses to administer certain medications, chemotherapies and supportive therapies to patients in the comfort of their own homes.

The Goal: To reduce patient and family stress, to increase satisfaction and quality of life for patients, and to reduce inpatient stays for patients cared for by the Hospital at Home team.

In 2023-24: The generous donation of a second vehicle and the addition of new staff have enabled the Hospital at Home team to see more patients in the comfort of their own home. The increased capacity also allowed for new weekend appointments, giving families more flexibility with transfusion appointments. This in turn has created additional capacity on the Medical Day Treatment Unit at Alberta Children’s Hospital to see more patients during the week.

Thanks to generous donors, young people facing mental health challenges in our community are receiving care in their own homes. This innovative model of care ensures children and teens are able to access supports in a way that best works for them and their families. From zoom chats to community coffee shops, to living rooms or school classrooms, Acute at Home clinicians provide comprehensive counselling and connection outside of a hospital setting making it easier for young patients and families to access the care they need when they need it most.

The Goal: To support kids who need help but do not need to be hospitalized, in the comfort of their own homes and communities. Families receive counselling and assessment services from experts who also help parents navigate the healthcare system and work with schools and families to support kids in their learning environments.

*In 2023-24, the health system took over full funding of the Acute at Home program, standardizing this unique and enhanced way of providing mental health support for kids. This is always the goal with any pilot project funded by the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation and we are so grateful for the generous support from our community that made this possible.

Thanks to a partnership among Alberta Health Services, the University of Calgary, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation and thousands of generous donors, The Summit: Marian & Jim Sinneave Centre for Youth Resilience, Calgary’s first community-based mental health centre for young people, is now open.

The Goal: To augment and integrate with the overall continuum of care currently provided through the Alberta Health Services Child & Adolescent Addiction, Mental Health and Psychiatry Program and other important community agencies, and provides families with greater access to timely assessments, intervention and therapy, and help reduce admissions and lengths of hospital stays for children and teens.

Located at 1015 – 17 Street NW, the Summit provides three new resources for kids, teens, and their families: the Owerko Family Walk In Services, the Tallman Family Treatment Services and the Ptarmigan Day Hospital. These services and other programs provide mental health support for young people to help them address issues as early as possible. The Summit opened its doors on March 13, 2023.

Owerko Family Walk In Services

Owerko Family Walk In Services offers no-cost therapy sessions for children, youth and families who need help with specific issues and possible solutions. These services are available from 9 am to 9 pm, seven days per week.

Tallman Family Treatment Services

Tallman Family Treatment Services helps young people manage acute escalating symptoms to help prevent or reduce the need for hospitalization. This is a “step-up” program. Patients are referred to this service from community clinics if they are not experiencing improvements in how they are managing.

Ptarmigan Day Hospital

The Ptarmigan Day Hospital is the city’s first pediatric mental health day hospital, helping youth transition from around-the-clock inpatient care to eight to 10 hours of daily intensive therapy in a community setting.

Did You Know? In addition to clinical care, everyone who enters The Summit is also able to benefit from and participate in crucial research, including nation-leading work in pharmacogenetics and non-invasive brain stimulation.

In 2023-24, 55% of Summit patients agreed to participate in one or more research projects underway. This research will generate new biological, psychosocial, translational and clinical data that can be used to develop, test and refine mental health interventions tailor made for kids – a pipeline from discovery to care, all under one roof.

For more information about The Summit, its programs and services, visit Alberta Health Services.

In 2005, our generous community helped establish the KidSIM Pediatric Simulation program at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, an invaluable resource for medical experts, families, and schools. And in 2014, donors helped build a new state-of-the-art KidSIm Centre. It has become one of the premiere simulation programs in the world with impacts realized on a local, provincial, national, and international scale and crosses the areas of education, patient safety, clinical research and patient and family centred care. Through KidSIM, caregivers practice real-time, emergency scenarios on high-fidelity, life-like mannequins to keep their skills as sharp as possible. Family members of children with complex medical needs and other significant people in their lives, such as teachers, can also learn to handle emergency situations. This allows many children and families a new level of independence and quality of life, reducing their reliance on hospital care.

The Goal: To ensure hospital experts and families are prepared for the wide range of life-saving challenges they may face at any given moment on any given day.

In 2023-24: The donor-funded KidSIM Centre celebrated 10 years of supporting families and care providers. Since January 2014, the Centre has been a vital training and education space for 50,000 learners. With the ability to run concurrent simulations in multiple labs, the KidSIM program has been able to provide more learning opportunities than ever before, especially for large interprofessional teams. The space’s versatility has allowed it to serve the diverse needs of clinical, academic and research groups, including clinical education and training, faculty development, research, advocacy, family-centered care and community outreach.

KidSIM continues to develop new education programs to support health care providers, as well as continuing to expand and grow family-centered care offerings to support children, families, caregivers, bus drivers and schools in the community.

Thanks to a pilot project funded by the community, local specialists have become national leaders in providing mental health literacy programs in junior high and high schools. The program was so well received that Alberta Health Services has taken over funding and expanded it to schools across the province. Donations have also enabled the team to recently develop materials tailored for elementary schools so younger students can also benefit. The work on this pilot project for elementary school students was developed jointly with education partners, parents, youth and mental health professionals.

The Goal: To help professionals who work with children – teachers, doctors and frontline care providers – to better understand and address mental health issues in school and in the community, ultimately leading to more timely and appropriate intervention, broad-based prevention and reduced social stigma.

* This pilot project wrapped and is now fully funded by the health system. This is great news for kids across the province and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation is proud of the generous community support that enabled this to happen!

With a nation-wide shortage of pediatric psychiatrists, this program equips doctors and front-line care providers with the tools they need to help young people and families struggling with mental health issues. The Canadian Research and Education for the Advancement of Child Health program (CanREACH) is a six-month fellowship that trains family physicians and front-line specialists to identify and treat mental health conditions in kids.

The Goal: To better equip care providers with the knowledge needed to get families the right kind of care as quickly as possible, minimize trips to emergency departments and reduce the need for specialist referrals.