Helping Kids Handle Illness and Death

Photograph by Linda Sterrett

Most people associate hospice care with elderly patients and terminally ill adults.

But in Colorado, Hospice of Metro Denver has become widely known for the services it also provides to children who are dying or grieving over the death of a loved one.

The hospice’s Youth Services Program gives kids who are seriously ill or who are mourning a death the opportunity to express themselves in numerous ways. The hospice offers support groups, as well as one-on-one counseling sessions between children and pediatric specialists.

Kids are encouraged to use toys, storytelling, or role-playing to communicate their feelings and their interpretations of death. For example, a child who has a sick parent or sibling may want to pretend to be a doctor caring for the relative, as the young boy in this picture is doing.

“Playing out what they’re processing is the natural way for a child to communicate,” says Carrie Bowerman, the hospice’s youth-services coordinator. “Sometimes, just sitting down and talking doesn’t work for them.”

The hospice opened its Youth Services Program in 1982 — the first in the metropolitan area to provide such care for terminally sick and grieving kids.

The program, which has an annual budget of $208,000, is supported primarily through charitable contributions, since most health-insurance companies do not pay the full cost of hospice care. Last year, the program helped 474 children cope with illness or bereavement.