Parents mentor parents at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford

Parent mentors at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford offer care-management strategies, as well as a shoulder to cry on, to parents of youngsters newly diagnosed with devastating medical conditions.

- By Ruthann Richter

Giselle Potter

Michele Ashland’s daughter was just a month old when Ashland learned in a phone call from her pediatrician that her newborn suffered from a life-threatening liver disease and might need a transplant to survive. She brought her ailing child to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, feeling overwhelmed.

“I landed here knowing nothing about liver disease, transplantation or hospitals,” said Ashland, now an employee at the children’s hospital. “I just thought the worst. I wondered, ‘Am I signing her up for a lifetime of being in the hospital?’ You feel so alone.”

As it turned out, her daughter would indeed need a liver transplant. With help from the health-care team, Ashland taught herself about liver transplants and learned how to navigate the medical and insurance systems, manage her daughter’s rigorous schedule of anti-rejection drugs and keep her safe from marauding pathogens, which can easily defeat transplant patients.

Emotional and practical support

Four years after the 1995 procedure, Karen Wayman, PhD, the developmental specialist on the liver team, recruited Ashland and other parents to give feedback on the transplant process and suggest ways to better support families in caring for their children after transplant. That marked the start of the parent mentor program at the children’s hospital, in which experienced parents offer care-management strategies, as well as a shoulder to cry on, to parents of youngsters newly diagnosed with devastating medical conditions.

When I approach families, I tell them I’m a parent and that they can talk to me.

The program, the first of its kind in the country, now includes 15 trained parent mentors, who are paid for their work and are essential members of the health-care team, said social worker Lindsey Martins, who oversees the program.

The mentors, some of whom are fluent in Spanish, offer emotional and practical support to parents of children with cancer, heart disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders and other complex medical conditions, as well as those with infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. In addition to face-to-face interactions with families, the mentors helped develop guides, available in print or online, with tips on relevant issues, such as managing insurance and organizing a child’s treatment and medication schedule.

“I used to think of the program as icing on the cake, but now I think it’s not just icing — something extra — because how you manage things as a parent can really make a difference in your child’s life,” said Ashland, whose daughter is now a thriving college junior.

‘They relax and let down their guard’

“When I approach families, I tell them I’m a parent and that they can talk to me,” said parent mentor Teresa Jurado, whose 26-year-old son has cerebral palsy. “You see their whole face change. It seems like they relax and let down their guard. They don’t have to pretend they have it all together.”

Angelica Marin, a mother of three from Lathrop, California, said she was struggling to take care of her daughter, 7-year-old Valeria, who was born with a disability that restricts her ability to walk, speak and feed herself. Ashland and Jurado both helped her with the process of securing a wheelchair, set up appointments with the child’s dozen or so specialists and arranged for a Spanish interpreter at a time when Marin was still learning English.

“I don’t have words to explain just how much they have helped me,” she said. “You feel so lost and are afraid of everything. I learned that I’m not alone.

“One piece of advice I always remember is they told me, ‘Never give up. There is always a door open for you.’”

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.

2023 ISSUE 3

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