A HIDDEN EPIDEMIC:
Ten-year-old Tyler feels more like a “patient” than a “person.” Despite fourteen surgeries, he remains bright, inquisitive, fun, funny. But, Tyler can’t talk due to a tracheotomy. He travels with a portable suction to keep his lungs open, and never knows when he’ll be back in Intensive Care fighting for his life.
Family adventures filled with joy and love, not stress, build resilience
Tyler is just one of the nearly 1 in 5 U.S. kids whose childhoods are stolen by chronic illness.
This hidden epidemic ruins childhoods, impairs employee productivity, upends careers, depletes bank accounts, destroys families, and creates long-term mental health crises for both patients and their loved ones.
When a child is diagnosed, the family is diagnosed. Sick kids suffer pain and fear. Healthy siblings are overlooked, witnessing endless emergencies that create anger, guilt, anxiety, even PTSD. Parents become caregivers, insurance experts, and disease specialists, managing crises for which there is no training – unable to make it “all better” for any of their children.
While pediatric hospitals offer a vast array of resources, at-home and in– the-community, these families don’t fit in and don’t have a place to belong. Invisible and isolated, everyone’s health and well-being is at-risk.
INNOVATION BORN FROM LISTENING:
Launched in 2015, Bounce Children’s Foundation is the first, and only, organization to fill this critical gap in the continuum of care. Bounce transforms the lives of chronically ill children, and their loved ones, shifting all from surviving to thriving.
Built with direct input from families and the healthcare community, our work complements theirs and their input refines ours. Finally, families have experiences & education, fun & friendship, connections & resources, hope & encouragement. Proven, practical support, available 24x7x365, from diagnosis through treatment, for as long as it takes.
UNIQUE PROGRAMS PROTECT AND PREVENT: Focused on social-emotional support, programs are uniquely designed to build the resilience needed to cope with the ongoing, unexpected, setbacks that define life with chronic illness:
Bounce Bash® from every-day to once-in-a-lifetime family adventures: Specially designed to include children who need a break from shots, surgeries, hospitalizations, and limitations. Parents connect to support one another, and siblings discover they are not alone either. Everyone feels safe, accepted and ‘normal’ at activities typically off-limits.
Bounce Back Kit® family care packages that distract and ease stress: Forced to spend endless weeks, months, even years, locked-in, families miss out. Delivered directly to home, these ‘boredom busters’ include games; movies; music; crafts; STEM projects; activity books; and more. Quality family time is critical to battling cabin fever.
Bounce Academy® strength training for vital coping skills: Education for parents to enhance their ability to hold themselves, and their families together, focused on the emotional, intellectual, psychological, and financial tools that really make a difference.
Bounce It Forward® turning donated tickets into unexpected fun: Generous individuals/organizations ‘pay it forward’ by sharing excess tickets with families who, never knowing when the next medical crisis will arise, cannot plan ahead. Attending high demand sports/theatre/ musical events restores spirit and optimism.
Bounce Net® 24×7 private, online community and safety net: Always on, always there, connecting parents when – and where – they need it most. Knowing you can always reach out to someone walking a similar path to ask a question, get advice, find a resource, or confide a worry, combats isolation. Through Bounce, community, strength, hope, and resilience replace isolation, fear, anxiety, and despair. Families feel “normal”, “seen but not stared at”, and “not alone anymore.”
HOLISTIC AND ONGOING:
Because disease does not discriminate, neither does Bounce. Bounce supports families from all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Bounce embraces kids with AIDS, Burns, Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, Crohn’s, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Gun Shots, Organ Transplants, Rare/Genetic Diseases, Sickle Cell, Traumatic Brain Injury, and more – including medically complex kids.
Thriving requires the continued intervention that Bounce provides. When a child is diagnosed, the entire family joins and stays until that child turns 21. Kids literally “grow up” with Bounce and members refer to Bounce as their “second family.”
AWARD WINNING AND JUST GETTING STARTED:
Awarded the 2019 Chicago Innovation Social Innovator Award and already serving more than 2,000 members across Chicagoland, Bounce envisions the day when it can serve every child battling chronic illness, and his/her family, across the United States.
More than the solution to isolation and invisibility that ruins lives, Bounce is also the convener of experts, originator of data, and voice of advocacy for these families. Bounce will continue to shine a light on this problem, but it will take ALL of us to create lasting change. Please Join, Refer, Volunteer, Donate so Bounce can help families heal.
