Mission
To provide a home that focuses on maintaining the quality of life for children with life-limiting illnesses and essential support for their families. It includes the management of distressing symptoms and provision for respite care, comfort care and bereavement.
Sarah House: Respite House for Children
Sarah House will provide respite care (round-the-clock) and palliative care (end-of-life) for children who suffer from life-threatening illnesses. The philosophy supporting the concept of Sarah House is patterned after Helen House, the world's first children's hospice which opened in England in November 1982.
Respite Care
Improvements in medical care have fostered a large number of children with complex illnesses, who in prior decades would not have survived their illness. These children live at home and require extensive 24-hour support. Helen House was established to help families cope by providing occasional respite care modeled on the care which is provided in their family home - personalized and tailored to individual needs. Respite care is where the child or young adult may stay in the facility with or without their family to allow a break from the normal routine, which is often exhausting.
Palliative Care
Sarah House would also be structured to handle aspects of end-of-life care. Although we are very proud of the care which the StarShine Hospice staff provides for children and their families, when a child dies of a terminal illness not all families choose to have their child die at home. When given the choice, most children prefer not to die in the hospital. Sarah House would serve as a much needed alternative. When a child with a life-shortening illness is home and experiences symptoms which are difficult to control, this facility would serve as an alternative to returning to the hospital for control of those symptoms.