Editor's Note: Last Fall our E-Newsletter featured this Q&A with Lisa Grubbs, Founder of NICU Helping Hands. We appreciate the organization's mission and so we are sharing the article with you here today on our blog.
Looking for a touching story as well? Grab a tissue and click here to read how NICU Helping Hands helps families cope while their child or children are in a hospital NICU.
Q&A with Lisa Grubbs, Founder of NICU Helping Hands Foundation
Why did you found the NICU Helping Hands Foundation?
My husband is a neonatologist and we saw the stress families endure while their baby was in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Babies in a NICU receive great medical care, but we consistently heard parents say, “I wish there was someone I could talk to who has gone through this…. I need to find someone who can help me deal with this hopeless feeling that is in my heart….. I just don’t have anyone to talk to…. I still can’t even hold my baby.” We could see a clear gap in services offered to these special families.
Founded in July 2010, NICU Helping Hands Foundation supports families with a premature infant in a hospital NICU both while they are in the hospital, and when they return home. After nearly a year of program research and fundraising, our flagship program, Project NICU, was launched in Ft. Worth’s Baylor All Saints Medical Center.
How does NICU Helping Hands Foundation help families?
We decided early on that NICU Helping Hands would offer an in-hospital program as well as community programs to all families – parents, siblings and, if needed, extended family – to ensure they are all coping well and receiving constant, judgment-free support and information while their baby is in the NICU and after they are discharged home.
Brent Dore, our Project NICU Program Facilitator, is a full-time, trained employee who works in the hospital directly with mothers who are on bed rest as well as with parents and siblings who have a baby in the NICU. We focus exclusively on the emotional and educational needs of the entire family, while the hospital staff focuses on the medical needs of mothers and babies. It is a best-case scenario during a very difficult time in the life of a family.
Project NICU includes:
- Printed materials to support parents as they manage the day-to-day realities of the NICU;
- Weekly support groups for parents of NICU babies;
- Monthly education sessions for parents and siblings;
- On-on-one support through our graduate parent mentoring program;
- Daily visits and special monthly programs for mothers on hospital bed rest;
- Services for families of premature infants transported from a birth hospital to a program hospital’s NICU;
- Bereavement services for families experiencing the loss of a child;
- Memory archiving classes for families; and
- NICU staff development opportunities.
Want to connect NICU Helping Hands Foundation? Visit them on Facebook.