Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2004. Peter snapped a photo of Mattie and me walking into a fall festival. Literally every weekend in the fall, we took Mattie to a different festival. The first year we did this, Mattie was cautious. He did not want to go on the slides or participate in many of the activities. Other than pumpkin picking. But with each year and more development behind him, he gained confidence and found these activities great fun, exciting, and of course this made us happy to see Mattie so engaged.
Quote of the day: I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Peter and I are now back in DC. I would say we had a very stressful and frustrating experience! We were invited to attend a problem solving skills training. This training is designed to teach mental health professionals an evidence based model that will assist parents of children with cancer. I want to make it clear that this training has nothing to do with our standards or Mattie Miracle's work.
Basically a research team designed a model with the intention of mental health providers using it with parents whose children have cancer. The model is to provide problem solving skills to parents. The reasoning being that providing such skills will reduce anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress. The training has been open for the last three years to social workers, psychologists, nurses and doctors. This is the first time, two non-profits were invited to attend. Prior to attending, I made it clear to the researchers that I had issues with their model and that I couldn't see it working in a clinical setting.
Here’s the problem. The model is quite linear and in opinion rigid. It is deemed to be supportive and not therapy! Yet keep in mind the training is given to therapists. Which doesn’t make sense for multiple reasons. First and foremost is that in a hospital setting parents aren’t the patients. So there is no reimbursement pathway for these professionals to provide care beyond the child. Second there is no time in a crisis for parents to focus on writing down their problems and solutions, which is encouraged in the model! It isn’t the right setting for this, and I speak confidently on this having lived in a hospital for 14 months. Third, the researchers want clinicians to simply provide the model without incorporating their supportive care skills. It is unnatural to ask this of a trained mental health professional.
Peter and I were honest with the researchers before attending this training given our hesitation to support their model. They thought seeing the training in person would alter our views. Unfortunately that is not what happened. Despite our best efforts to confront the researchers we got no where during the training sessions. This is the issue with designing a model in a research vacuum. It may work in a lab but it doesn’t take into account the stresses professionals are already balancing or the lack of time, energy and intense stress parents are living with inpatient and outpatient.
So I left frustrated particularly knowing they trained 250 clinicians already and yet none of these people have been able to implement the model at their hospitals. Naturally all the way home, I kept analyzing what I said, mainly because I know what I said was discounted. I could have easily said nothing, but that did not seem genuine.
Placard
It's untitled!
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