Starlight Moments exists to positively impact the lives of children in palliative care and their families. We work in collaboration with the health professionals to determine the best way to create moments of fun and happiness through important and meaningful experiences for the whole family. Starlight Moments create family memories that are tailored specifically to the child and their family and each moment is special.
Parents' coping when their child is in palliative or end of life care
Earlier this month, Dr Claire Treadgold - National Manager of Research & Evaluation at Starlight Children's Foundation, presented 'Starlight Moments' at the 2021 Oceanic Palliative Care Conference. Claire's talk focused on sharing the story of Rosie - a palliative child with chronic kidney disease - and her family, who were one of the families impacted by Starlight Moments. She explained how the Moments team, in partnership with Palliative Care teams, gets to know each family in order to create ongoing experiences that are tailored to their unique interests. These moments are often small, and can be for any member of the family, but create lasting memories. As an example, she described the LEGO treasure hunt that Starlight Moments created for Rosie and her family (with the help of our very LEGO Master Jimmy Eaton). With COVID-19 being an extra challenge for these vulnerable families, Claire also mentioned how the Starlight Moments team quickly responded and sent out ‘happiness hampers’ and other at home activities to support them.
"Ultimately the program is all about making memories." - Dr Claire Treadgold
Claire was also interviewed about Rosie and Starlight Moments for a Croakey Health Media article. The article can be found here.
Caring for a child with a life-limiting illness can be challenging. Parents need to employ a range of coping strategies to manage their child's illness, poor prognosis and confront the reality of their child’s eventual death. Better understanding parental coping can lead to the development of appropriate interventions to support families.
UK researchers, Darlington et al (2021), interviewed bereaved parents and parents of a child with a life-limiting/threatening condition about their coping strategies. They categorised coping strategies as whether they are: i) approach (i.e. address the problem directly) vs. avoidance (i.e. avoid the problem), and ii) self (i.e. focused on the self) vs. family (i.e. focused on family/friends).
For example: Some coping strategies are classified as 'avoidance' AND 'self'. Parents in this study described using these types of strategies, such as, 'staying positive', 'taking a break', 'humour' and 'getting on with it'.
The researchers describe that the variety of coping strategies that parents used speaks to the notion of flexibility of coping, and steps away from labelling strategies as positive or negative. When used in parallel (not in isolation), all coping strategies can be positive. It is clear that Starlight Moments provides a range of coping strategies for the child and their family - Starlight Moments provides positivity to the parents and family, allows parents to take a break, provides some normality, allows the child to feel special, and allows the family to live life to the full. As such, Starlight Moments is as a unique psychosocial intervention that may lead to improved outcomes through facilitating numerous coping strategies.