The Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital (KBRH) is a rural, regional healthcare facility in BC's southern interior. While most of the hospital had been renovated, its maternity and pediatrics departments were original to when they were built in 1953.
Some very tough challenges face the caregivers charged with helping our smallest patients and their families. The structure of the departments were created in a time when healthcare focused on illness and illness meant isolation. The departments were spare and traditional. The currect practice at KBRH focuses on wellness and is inclusive of families. The facility supported the opposite approach.
Healthcare providers did their best to practice modern, rural care and they did so while living in tough reality - government funding for renovation was as many as 15 years away. Children in kindergarten would be adults by the time the departments were renovated.
The KBRH Health Foundation decided not to wait. We needed to help children, their families and their caregivers. Our communities immediately told us they were onboard. We knew that the task at hand would also require that we find new friends to help us. It took us mere seconds to think of Variety - The Children's Charity. When children are in need, Variety is there.
Mostly everything we had in pediatrics was well maintained but old; our nursery was outdated. We really needed a negative pressure isolation room. We crossed our fingers, submitted our proposal and hoped that Variety would find a way to fund some small part of it, but we didn't realize with whom we were dealing. Variety - The Children's Charity is a determined champion of children. Variety helped us with all of it.
We were just bowled over and so very grateful. Our children would immediately have new cribs, twins could snuggle in a crib designed just for them and our new nursery would be modern and designed for the practice of today. We would be able to manage sick children, very sick children, whose transport to other centres was blocked by weather and avalanches. Our children and their families would have a facility like every other department in the hospital - one that supported modern, rural care.
Variety - The Children's Charity gave this to us and their generosity was noted by others who then stepped up to give to the renovation. Variety helped us to create a beautiful environment - a tapesty, really - of giving. Variety is able to do this because along with its well defined vision of helping children, it also brings to its work a thoughtful diligence and a determination to get the work done. Its successes inspire others to help.
We are deeply grateful to Variety for being such organized and committed children's advocates. The children of the Kootenay Boundary are lucky indeed to have such a friend.
Jane Power, Director of Development KBRH Health Foundation
