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Melanie Cole (Host): Every year, Henry Mayo’s volunteer services department holds a teddy bear drive. The teddy bears are given to pediatric patients in our emergency department in an effort to comfort them. My guest is April Garcia. She’s the supervisor of volunteer services at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. April, let’s start with younger patients. Tell us a little bit about what they go through when they have to be in the hospital.

April Garcia (Guest): So, our younger patients usually come through the or they always come through the emergency department and as they are being processed through the emergency department, it could be a bit overwhelming depending on the day, the time, what the issue is with the child. So, they come through the emergency department, they are either having to wait in the waiting room or they are brought straight back to the back to the doctor depending on the reason why they came in. and it can be a bit frightening for them. As you know, emergency rooms can be very sterile and they can be very cold, so these children don’t know what to expect.

So, coming through brings a little bit of fear to them. So, we here at Henry Mayo try to bring them some sort of comfort.

Host: Isn’t that wonderful? And I imagine when they have to go to the emergency room, they don’t have time to grab their favorite stuffed animal or toy or book at the time as well. So, tell us a little bit about the teddy bear drive. How did it come about?

April: So, the teddy bear drive came about I believe more than ten years ago. We have a wonderful league in Santa Clarita, the Assistance League and they started donating teddy bears to the hospital because they wanted to give back, make a difference and obviously, Santa Clarita’s population has grown from ten years ago. So, with that, we found that we were needing more teddy bears than what was just being donated once a year.

So, we have started collecting teddy bears annually, actually throughout the year and what happened is we have so many people wanting to come through and donate bears that we couldn’t keep up and we couldn’t store them. So, we came up with our annual donate a bear drive which is held here on campus at Henry mayo Hospital. We have people throughout our community, our community partners, our families within the community that were touched with their child receiving a teddy bear and so they come in and they donate bears. And we have bears on hand year round to pass out to our young patients in the emergency room that brings them comfort.

And most times, we have a lot of families that were touched by receiving a teddy bear that they’ll come back, share their story and say how it brought comfort to not only the patient, but to the whole family because it just brought the stress level down. And so, they want to come back and give back. So, a lot of families actually come throughout the year and want to just donate bears or ask how they can donate bears and so that’s how the drive came about. So, it has come to fruition in a great way with a great sense of community support to the hospital.

Host: April, how do the bears get handed out? How do you know when children come into the emergency department? Who tells you and what’s the process when you find out there’s a child in there and you want to get a bear to them, what happens?

April: So, what we do is we have a storage in our storage area in the emergency department because the teddy bear distribution is widely know throughout the hospital. So, the director of the emergency room and the managers of the emergency room, they share with their employees that we have bears on hand for them to pass out to any child that they feel that needs a teddy bear to bring them a sense of comfort. Not only do the staff pass the bears out, but our volunteers that volunteer in the emergency room also pass the bears out. And so our volunteers and our staff, we come together, and we make sure that our teddy bears are stocked in the emergency room.

Whenever we are short of teddy bears; that’s where our partnership with Camelot Moving and Storage here in Santa Clarita has partnered with us and because we’ve collected – during our last two teddy bear drives, we have collected over 3000 bears and so, they have partnered with us and they store our bears for free. So, what happens is when we have a need to restock our bears here on site, we have to drive over to Camelot, pick up a large amount of bears and then we just continue the stocking process throughout the year.

Host: Then tell us your guidelines for donating bears. What do people have to know about where and when and how they can make this donation?

April: So, we have a drive, which is once a year, because we like to collect the most bears that we can at one time so then we can have them sent over to Camelot Moving and Storage to store our bears. However, we do take donations year round. A lot of times people are referred to the volunteer department because I am the supervisor of volunteers here. They will call here, and they will like to come by and drop off a bag of bears.

The requirement for a bear is the bear has to be brand new. It can’t be gently used. It can’t be a new bear that has been in their home on a shelf for years. It has to be a brand new bear due to the fact that taking them into the hospital, they are being brought into a sterile environment. So, we have to have, and we can only receive brand new bears, thus giving them to patients that can be ill. So, we don’t want to have more germs than what are already coming through the emergency department due to people.

So, we request that they would be 12 inch bears. No smaller than that and no larger, but you know, there’s always an exception to the rule if they bring in a bag of bears, we work it. we work with that, but we do highly suggest that they would be 12 inch bears, no smaller than that and that they would be brand new teddy bears.

Host: April, how are the families and the kids receiving them? Are they loving them? What happens when you give one?

April: When we give the bears, it is their bear to keep. The families are very surprised when we have a volunteer or we have a nurse, a tech, emergency room doctor come through. A lot of times, when the doctor is examining the child, because our emergency room gets so busy, we may skip a room and not know there’s a child in there. Even our physicians know that we pass out teddy bears and they go and they look for an employee or a volunteer to take a bear to that child. Once they receive the bear, it is their bear to keep. A lot of times we get a lot of families coming through again, telling us the stories about the children and their bears and how they love it and it was a scary moment coming into the hospital; but it became a nice comforting time of remembrance for the child also.

Host: What a lovely program. April, as we wrap up, tell us why it’s important to the patients and to the community that this kind of volunteer effort which really can help so many kids and for families, for parents to see their children relax even just a little bit when they see a bear has got to be such a relief. So, kind of reiterate when the donations happen, what you would like people to know about donating these bears and why it’s so important that people get involved in volunteer work.

April: So, the donation happens year round like I said, they can be dropped off at the volunteer office, but we do have our annual donate a bear drive once a year so we can collect a large amount. Bears are collected here on campus. We have our Camelot Moving and Storage truck here. We normally have some kind of fun giveaways. This year we are going to have an ice cream truck by Tracy Grant with RE/MAX Gateway and Augusta Financial. She’s sponsoring it. We are also going to have our Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital pet therapy dogs here on site.

So, it’s going to be a really great day of community. I would like people to know that the reason why these bears are so important to the children is because comfort and support also brings healing to the patient. So, even though they are being diagnosed while they are in the hospital; just bringing down that stress level and bringing in support already starts the process of their healing once they are brought in or as a patient.

So, and then the other reason is because we love to have a program that can bring in the whole community. Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital has been in Santa Clarita for over 40 years and our volunteers have really taken on this ownership of the hospital to where they pour their hearts into it and wanting to make a difference in the community. And there’s nothing better than having a program that actually everybody in the community can participate no matter what age they are. So, it’s a great sense of community support. It’s a great sense of starting the healing for a patient and we just really enjoy doing this.

We also have departments in our hospital that come together and collect the bears within their department to bring a sense of camaraderie and everyone knows that it’s a great feeling when you’re giving back and you’re helping someone. And that’s the reason why we do it. We are a hospital that cares, and we stand by our We Care motto here and this is just one way we can care about our patients along with bringing in the community to partner with us in doing so.

Host: What a wonderful program. April, when is the next donation?

April: The next donation will be Saturday, June 8^th. It will here, on the hospital campus. It will start at 10 a.m. and it will end at 1 p.m. And like I said previously, Camelot Moving and Storage will be here. We will also have an ice cream truck sponsored by Tracy Grant and RE/MAX Gateway and Augusta Financial. We will also have our pet therapy dogs here on site. So, it’s going to be a wonderful day and a wonderful day for the community to come together and just doing something good for one another.

Host: Thank you so much for all the great work that you do and for coming on with us today and telling us about the teddy bear drive. And that wraps up another episode of It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Head on over to our website at www.henrymayo.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other interesting podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.