Buy & Give: Helping Families with C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital

Step inside C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital to discover healing therapies alongside medicine, and copy paper that helps. 

Had we not, as a human race, experienced 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, it’d be nearly impossible to understand what life feels like when the world as we know it comes to an alarming halt. Yet we do now, collectively, understand the experience. However, families entering C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital face a reality that very few of us have ever encountered, or truly understand.

Not only has a devastating medical diagnosis come crashing into their lives – alarming to say the least – but the world simply does not halt for these families. While parents may spend days, weeks, and months with one of their children who is a patient or “Little Victor” at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, siblings still have soccer practice and dentist appointments, need help with their homework after dinner, and still need a semblance of their family, intact.

C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital recognizes that time spent in a hospital is a stressful experience for children and families. Developing the Child and Family Life Center, with specialized services and a team of trained professionals with expertise in helping reduce stress and anxiety associated with hospitalization and illness, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital works to help the healing journey of patients and families – Millcraft’s Buy & Give Paper is part of what C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital makes possible.

Buy & Give
Established in 2015, Millcraft’s Buy & Give initiative grew out of its mission to create meaningful impact within Millcraft’s communities. The program provides businesses the opportunity to support local charities through routine purchases of Millcraft’s Buy & Give brand office paper. For every carton of paper purchased, Millcraft donates $1 to the program. Since its inception through 2022, Buy & Give has generated more than $600,000 within Midwest communities served by Millcraft and select charitable organizations, including C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Opened in 1969, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital today is a 1.1 million square-foot-facility that includes a 12-story inpatient tower and 9-story clinic tower. With 348 inpatient beds, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital also includes a Family Center, Activity Centers, Paws for Patients Animal Therapy, Art and Music Therapy, and even Therapeutic Gaming – the latter drawing national attention for its innovation and success.

Millcraft’s Vice President and Detroit Regional Manager Julie Sattler says her region’s Buy & Give proceeds, totaling more than $100,000 to-date, have gone to C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital since 2015, predominantly to Child and Family Life services. “They do so much for families and siblings of the sick child,” Sattler says, “it’s an incredible place. Together with C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, we’re able to help people, right in our community, with what we have to work with, paper. Buy & Give paper has a mission, and we’re all in.”

Child & Family Life
With colorful walls and bright, joyous art, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital intends to feel more like a home-away-from-home than a hospital. With the Child and Family Life team members, who provide non-medical therapy and support, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital’s Child and Family Life services include:

• The Wayne and Shelly Jones Family Center: Designed by families and health care professionals, the Family Center is a comfortable environment for inpatients, outpatients, and their families. With a cozy kitchenette, library of books and DVDs, sibling drop-off program, special events including workshops, storytelling, and even “Cupcake Therapy'' on Fridays, the Family Center is a space where families can take a break and relax together.
• Activity Centers: Located on multiple floors, each activity center is staffed by Child and Family Life professionals trained in child development. Younger patients, and siblings, can enjoy arts and crafts, board games, and toys for all ages; special Teen Activity Rooms are stocked with teen-specific activities for patients and siblings ages 13 to 20. All guests are encouraged to visit the Michigan Game Day Experience, an indoor playground for patients and families.
• Art Therapy: Helping children express, create, and heal in an open and supportive environment, Art Therapy is provided by board-certified art therapists and is available bedside or in small groups to patients and families. Art Therapy activities are personally tailored to provide meaningful and memorable experiences for each patient, and can help patients and families cope with the hospital experience, focus thoughts away from pain and discomfort, relieve fear and anxiety, and just have some fun!
• Music Therapy: Helping patients relax and refocus from pain, and to cope during tests and procedures, board-certified music therapists provide music therapy to patients and families. Relaxed, creative, playful music therapy sessions may include playing instruments or learning to play, relaxing to music, writing a song, and even recording music. Sophie’s Place at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, the sixth in the nation, is a dedicated music therapy environment that provides solace for patients and their families throughout the healing process.
• Therapeutic Gaming and Digital Technology Program: The Patient Technology Department at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital is committed to enhancing the patient experience and supporting healing through creative use of gaming and a wide range of emerging technology platforms. A therapeutic gaming and digital specialist typically works with approximately 1,000 patients in a year. Benefits to patients include encouraging motor skills and critical thinking, and reducing isolation from friends and family outside the hospital through online gaming. Therapeutic gaming may include game development, where patients build their own games; Legos and robotics kits that keep patients’ minds busy and teach basic coding skills; and virtual reality technology that allows patients to experience life outside the hospital, including the chance to run down the tunnel onto the field at “The Big House” University of Michigan Stadium!
  
  Together With Millcraft
  At C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, Child and Family Life team members work together with doctors, nurses, social workers, and others throughout the hospital to meet the emotional, developmental, and cultural needs of children and their families.
  
  “We see more than 130,000 children and families a year at C.S. Mott, and they go through so much,” says Gene Skidmore, Assistant Director of Corporate Partnerships, Michigan Medicine Office of Development. “We’re able to make a difference in their lives, not only medically, with Child and Family Life services. That is why we’re so glad to have partnerships with people like Millcraft, who help us to help them.”
  
  By: Jen W. O’Deay
  
  To learn more about the Buy & Give program in your community, Just ask.