Would your hospital be interesting in hosting and implementing The Beaded Journey program? If so, please contact The Foundation for Children with Cancer for details. We have one complete program ready to be implemented at a pediatric hospital, and would love to be able to award this program to your hospital.

If you are not familiar with the program, here are the details:

A Beaded Journey is designed to document and honor the journey that children take when diagnosed with cancer. It gives children a chance to tell their story using beads as symbols of different aspects of treatment that they have to endure. It is a visual and tactile memento to keep that represents their journey.

Patients who choose to participate in the bead program are given a necklace with beads that spell out their first name. For future procedures, such as chemotherapy sessions, surgeries, and transfusions, patients are given a colorful bead that goes along with that particular aspect of treatment. There is even a special bead for just having a particularly good, or bad, day.

Important aspects of the program:

• The start of the necklace can signify the beginning of a journey through cancer treatment.
• It is an acknowledgement by staff to the patients, and their families, that they are facing a battle one step at a time.
• It is a way for the patients and families to begin bonding with the staff.
• It gives each patient a visual of their treatment progression; Oftentimes, receiving a bead means that they are one step closer to completion of treatment.

We would love to speak with your further regarding this program. It is fully inventoried and ready to implement. Please contact us at info@childrenwithcancer.org, or (314) 843-9300, for more information.