Social, Emotional, and Subjective Health Benefits of the Children’s Healing Center
CHILDREN’S HEALING CENTER
BACKGROUND
DataWise has been partnering with the Children’s Healing Center (CHC) since 2017. CHC is a facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan that serves children, adolescents, and young adults with weak immune systems as well as their family members. While these individuals typically must limit social interactions to avoid pathogens and minimize illness, CHC creates a safe, clean place for them to interact with others.
EVALUATION DESIGN
We began our work with CHC by conducting a literature review and identifying outcomes that would be impacted by CHC involvement and that would, in turn, improve physical and mental health. We tested our model by conducting a survey and focus groups with CHC members. The vast majority of CHC members reported that CHC helped them in a variety of ways, such as feeling less social isolation, loneliness, and stress as well as improving their mood and overall quality of life. We shared these promising results through a peer-reviewed publication in the American Journal of Recreation Therapy.
In other work, we evaluated the trauma-informed care training for CHC staff and volunteers using pre-training, post-training, and follow-up assessments. We also completed observational assessments of CHC programming and provided recommendations.
Since early 2022, we have gathered periodic reports from CHC members about the social isolation, loneliness, friendships, social support, and other outcomes they experience. As of October 2023, this research shows that parents are more than 18 times as likely to say their child’s health got better than worse since becoming involved with CHC. Similarly, 4-in-5 kids say that they are healthier now than before they joined CHC. Beneficial effects of being involved with CHC even extend to siblings. Check out this infographic for more details.
We look forward to working with CHC as they serve more community members, move into a larger facility in Grand Rapids, and open a second facility to bring the healing power of play to Southeast Michigan.
“DataWise has been an amazing partner, from helping us collect data to measure our organization’s impact, to doing observation evaluation for improvement, to creating amazing infographics that tell the story of our data. Their team is always wonderful to work with and exceed expectations.”
- Kelsey Sankovic, CHC Research Coordinator