The Harold E. Ballard Foundation | Children's Health Foundation

Supplementary Information for the Harold E. Ballard Foundation

The Harold E. Ballard Foundation’s previous generosity has provided Children’s Hospital with funding to retrofit two ER exam rooms and provide specialty equipment, both of which made a significant impact on the well-being of sick and injured children in our region.

This year, Children’s Health Foundation is honoured to have the opportunity to continue our relationship with you through our grant application. Below, you will find more information about our inpatient unit and the life-enriching renovations you can help make possible.

BUILDING ON YOUR LEGACY OF SUPPORT FOR CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

Our current request to The Harold E. Ballard Foundation is a contribution to the renovation of five patient rooms on our inpatient floor at Children’s Hospital.

A second home – that’s how many patients and their families refer to Children’s Hospital in London, Ontario. Through their health care journeys, they come to know it as a place that they can trust and feel safe in during the most difficult times in their lives. As kids continue to face medical emergencies, cancer, chronic illness and other life-threatening health issues during uncertain times, Children’s stands by them with leading-edge care.

Children’s Hospital offers the most advanced paediatric care in its region. Each year, it is counted on by more than 56,000 children, from birth to age 18, living in Western Ontario.

This year, Children’s Hospital celebrates 100 years of providing the best care and most hope to children and their families. Families across our vast geographical region from Windsor to London and Kitchener-Waterloo and as far north as Thunder Bay – which includes urban, rural and remote Northern areas – count on the hospital for its specialized medical expertise.

Children’s Hospital is also a vital contributor to education and research with the second largest paediatric residency program in the province that attracts the very best and brightest physicians, researchers, scientists, and trainees who work together to improve health outcomes for our region’s kids.

In the last 5 years, there has been an increased need for the specialized care at Children’s – a 47% increase in total paediatric patients, with an 18% increase in out-of-town patients.

In our B6 inpatient unit alone, over 3,000 children each year require around-the-clock care for complex conditions ranging from oncology to traumatic brain injury. Annually, the B6-200 section of our inpatient unit cares for over 1,100 of those patients, from newborns to 18-years-olds who most are commonly facing conditions with neurology involvement, cystic fibrosis or traumatic/acquired brain injury. 

You can help ensure all of our kids and their families have the best possible care and most possible hope when they need it most.

Some of the rooms on B6–200 were originally designed with infants in mind, as they specifically care for patients ages 0-6 months as well as those older than 6 months, while the other half of the floor B6-100 cares for only patients over 6 months of age. Specially crafted for infants, five of the 14 private rooms in the 32-room-wing do not have bathrooms. As the third-largest paediatric care centre in Canada, these bathroom-less rooms now need to be renovated to meet the diverse care needs of all patients.

Pictured below is the private bathroom design that Children’s Hospital intends to use when adding these much-needed facilities.

We kindly request The Harold E. Ballard Foundation consider contributing $53,000, the full cost of one bathroom. We are approaching you first for this renovation project, and your lead gift would begin the crucial process of securing the full funding required for the renovation that will ensure timely and equitable care for every critically ill inpatient and their families, regardless of age.

Improving the infrastructure of this unit will have an impact on not only the 1,100+ children that this wing serves, but also their families and the B6-200 staff.

Some of these families were delighted to share their story with you today:

Testimonials

Meet Marah.

When her stomach pain and nausea just wouldn’t end, a simple blood test turned Marah’s world upside down. Diagnosed with Leukemia, Marah and her family went from their own comfy beds to sleeping in their inpatient room at Children’s Hospital, facing COVID-19 protocols and talking about chemotherapy.

Throughout their five-and-a-half-month hospital journey, Marah and her family recorded her entire experience in a workbook. They tracked every medication, procedure and person they encountered each day. From the nurses they loved chatting with, to each mischievous prank Marah pulled with Ollie the Therapeutic Clown.

But the one thing Marah and her family never had to worry about was a bathroom.

As Marah’s mother Lee Anne describes, “Having a private bathroom made all the difference for us. When Marah was admitted she was so heavily medicated that she was getting up sick in the middle of the night, with no memory of it in the morning. Coupled with the concerns about COVID-19, we had to stay in her room for her safety and best possible care. I can’t imagine what our journey would have been like without that safety and convenience of our own bathroom.”

Marah’s symptoms from treatment would have made living without a private bathroom virtually impossible.

At one point during her treatment Marah explains how, “my feet had swelled up so much that my Dad had to lift me up and scoot me into the bathroom. It was hard enough to get to the bathroom in my own room.

If I didn’t have my own bathroom, it would have caused so many more problems for me and my family.”

When you’re experiencing symptoms from oncology treatments like Marah and immunosuppression, the privacy and safety of a private bathroom means never having to worry about the logistics for such a necessary part of each day. Managing personal hygiene and treatment symptoms is as simple as taking a few steps away from the hospital bed. And even on those days when a few steps feel like a few miles, a private bathroom means having the help of family to get through it together.

With the help of The Harold E. Ballard Foundation, every inpatient can experience the ease and safety that Marah and her family had with their private bathroom.

Meet Sarah.

As the Clinical Manager of B6–200, Sarah knows exactly the energy and time that room transfers and bathroom logistics take away from her team in a day.

“The lack of bathrooms in these five private rooms raises the constant question about how to serve patients in a timely and equitable way. Sometimes the bathroom-less rooms are the only ones available and then our team must move patients between rooms for their hygiene needs or transfer them to another room as soon as possible. These logistical issues take time out of Nurses, Personal Support Workers and Cleaners’ days to maneuver everything.

It’s funny because it seems very minute when you think about a bathroom, but it really does have an impact on how people feel. All the little things that add up. For patients and their parents, it means they are able to tend to their hygiene needs without any extra steps or worry, and for staff it means being able to put aside the extra work and dissatisfaction that comes with not having a room that fits every patient’s needs.”

With the support of The Harold E. Ballard Foundation, staff would feel that their patients’ environment now matches the leading-edge care that they provide.

Recognition for The Harold E. Ballard Foundation:

In celebration of your support, Children’s Health Foundation would be honoured to recognize The Harold E. Ballard Foundation as a Stand By Me Champion.

We launched the Stand By Me campaign in 2020 to rally people to support the best possible care for our children.

As a Stand By Me Champion, your recognition could include:

- Inclusion of The Harold E. Ballard Foundation as a member of the special Stand By Me Circle of Champions, comprised of donors who have pledged significant gifts of $10,000 or more in 2022, on the Children’s Health Foundation website https://childhealth.ca/standbyme/

- If you decide to fund the full amount of our request, an individual plaque recognizing your support to be hung in one of the patient rooms your grant enables the hospital to renovate

- The Harold E. Ballard Foundation name included with our other Stand By Me Champions on a plaque to be hung in a prominent location in the hospital and also in a group thank you ad in a London business magazine

We are sincerely grateful for your consideration of this request and would be pleased to work with you to recognize your support in a way that would be meaningful to you.