Here For You
A new Sesame Workshop initiative helps children cope with serious illness.
| Chester, Danny, and Elmo (Here For You) |
It goes without saying that when a young child faces a life-threatening illness, it is devastating for everyone involved. When Sesame Workshop's outreach staff realized that the organization was in a strong position to help families during these hard times, they identified two difficult questions that they needed answers to: How do you help a young child cope with a life-threatening illness? How do families talk about their situation?
Helping families discuss a child's illness
To gain insight into these tough questions, the Workshop held a phone advisory with pediatric oncology nurses, social workers, child life specialists, pediatricians and bereaved parents. During the advisory, service providers shared their experiences in treating young children and parents who had experience a loss of a child due to a critical illness shared their experiences and helped the Workshop identify the project goals. Participants learned that the idea of talking about these situations and coping with them is not just important for children facing a life-threatening illness but also those receiving palliative care.
The advisory group discussed the need for resources that would help kids and parents ease their ability to discuss the difficult topic they faced. The project gives those affected by life-threatening illnesses ideas on how to start a conversation about the difficult topic of illness with their children. Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop's vice president of outreach and educational practices, explains, "There are many children who, at one point in their life, can face a life-threatening or serious illness, or a chronic illness. And consistently, in many ways, they want to talk about it. Yet what we found was that kids want to talk about it but they're afraid to talk about it with the adults in their lives, because they're afraid to make the adults scared. They're trying to protect them."
The project culminated in a bilingual outreach project that was unveiled in May 2008 at the 32nd Annual Conference of the Association of Pediatric Oncology Social Workers.
Introducing Elmo's cousin Chester
Here For You is based around the concept of honest, open talk. It encourages children and adults to ask lots of questions, and looks to establish communication in both directions – adults with children, and children with adults. To achieve this, the Workshop team worked with The Center for Advanced Illness Coordinated Care (CAICC) to produce an original DVD that tells the story of Sesame Street's Elmo visiting his cousin Chester in the hospital as he is treated for a serious illness. Chester is a Sesame Street Muppet who was created specifically for the Here for You project. With input from doctors, nurses, and children, Elmo helps Chester understand and express his feelings of fear, anger, and guilt.
| Danny with Kevin Clash |
The DVD also features Danny, a young leukemia patient who charmed Muppeteer Kevin Clash (Elmo) during filming. Clash recalls that Danny came in with his family to visit the set a few times. He and "Elmo" talked and played, made each other laugh, and enjoyed goofing around together. Danny also got along great with Joey Mazzarino, who wrote the DVD script and Muppeteered Chester.
"When we weren't shooting, he was underneath the bed with Joey [Mazzarino], puppeteering Chester," Clash recalls. "Sometimes he'd be underneath there doing voices, and he'd forget we were recording, and we'd have to ask him, 'Danny, can you keep it down a little bit?' He was just a cool kid."
Danny found the whole process so fascinating that Clash and Mazzarino asked the Jim Henson Company to build Danny his own puppet. He was overjoyed with his new puppet, especially when Clash and Mazzarino showed him how to operate it.
CAICC will distribute 5,000 copies of the Here For You DVD to the nation's 250 children's hospitals, pediatric medical organizations, and children's palliative care programs. The nonprofit healthcare research and public policy organization, which is affiliated with Dartmouth Medical School, is also launching the Helping Children Cope With Serious Illness Fund (HCCwSIF). HCCwSIF will donate funds to participating children's hospitals in order to support full-time pediatric behavioral health specialists who will provide additional ongoing, outpatient, health counseling for children and families facing serious illnesses.
