CLIMB® Programs
{Children's Lives Include Moments of Bravery}
Art-Based, Evidence-Backed
Founded in January of 2001* in Denver, Colorado, the Children’s Treehouse Foundation is the nation’s only organization providing group-based, manualized and internationally delivered, psychosocial intervention developed specifically to support the emotional needs of children with a parent or caregiver who has cancer. This often overlooked aspect of cancer treatment now has a program that kids, parents and oncology professionals all rave about, the CLIMB® Program.
Children and Teens
Ages 6-17
Program Benefits
This is what it is all about! The CLIMB® program helps to normalize feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear and anger of the child. It helps to support communication of these complex feelings, increases the child’s knowledge about cancer, and facilitates communication between the parent and child.
Our program will provide children and teens with:
The support, tools and understanding to become more comfortable with the cancer process they are witnessing on behalf of their parent.
The ability to understand and cope with the dramatic changes they are witnessing and experiencing in the home, including:
- The physical and emotional changes that their parents are experiencing; -The shift in roles among parents that often occurs; -The lost-time together due to doctor appointments, treatments, increased need for rest.
The ability to healthfully express their feelings and emotions, which may range from fear, to anger to sadness.
The ability to meet and share feelings with other children in similar situations, and learn that “I’m not the only kid in school with a parent who has cancer.”
The CLIMB® program provides life-long benefits to children. Not only are they learning to cope with the current stressor of having cancer in the family, but they will be able to apply these coping skills to future stressful events that they will encounter throughout their lives.
Benefits for Parents
Psychosocial professionals have been sensitive to the emotional impact that the disease of cancer has on the entire family system – especially the children. Although the emotional response of every cancer patient is unique, the initial set of feelings for many adults who have been diagnosed with cancer often ranges from shock, to fear, to a sense of lost control, and anger.
From the initial time of diagnosis through the process of treatment and recovery, parents with cancer suddenly find themselves immersed in an overwhelming sea of emotions, appointments and information – all while trying to manage and maintain a degree of normalcy at their home, their job and their families.
Our program enables you to provide parents with the peace of mind that the emotional needs of their children are being addressed during this challenging time in their lives. You’ll also be providing them with the tools to talk openly about their disease with their children, and to encourage their children to express their own feelings and concerns.
Our program will provide parents with:
The tools to identify and address the affect their disease is having on their children.
Reduced stress by knowing that their children are getting the support and assistance they need to normalize the feelings that accompany this “family disease.”
The emotional support of other parents who are dealing with similar issues.
Parents tell us they can now more easily talk with their children about the cancer, that their children are expressing more feelings at home, that the children look forward to the “club,” and they— the parents— are now comfortable in requesting more information and support.
Benefits for Professionals
CLIMB® is an acronym for Children’s Lives Include Moments of Bravery. But it’s really more than that. It’s an enjoyable, sharing, interactive session for children of parents with cancer to come together to deal with their feelings. Children are powerfully shaped by their external environment, which social scientists refer to as the Power of Context. Thus, in this context of the CLIMB® group activities, wherein small groups of children engage in art therapy and play therapy as tools to enable them to express their feelings, an almost magical transformation takes place. Children learn basic information about cancer, but more important, that they are not alone: other kids are dealing with the same emotional upheaval. And collectively, under the studied guidance of caring professional therapists, the children develop coping skills. Moreover, the interaction of the children in this context can not be underestimated. The sharing and bonding of the children results in such expressions as, “I’d rather go to the support group than the soccer practice,” or as an older child said, “Why wouldn’t you want me to go to the support group?”
Thus, CLIMB® provides professionals with the tools, program and confidence to launch a unique, six-week psychosocial intervention, emotional support program at their cancer hospital for families with cancer. The benefits to both you and your organizational are many, including:
You’re offering a value-added service to your patient that reduces stress and allows for their immune system response to be more effective.
The program is proven, cost-effective and easy-to-implement.
You can customize the program to meet your unique organizational needs.
Through our CTF forum, you receive ongoing guidance, support of CTF, and the existing network of professionals who have implemented the program.
Utilizing the CLIMB® brand in your program materials links you to other successful CLIMB® programs around the country, that are receiving favorable media attention.
