Support Services
We go beyond immediate care needs to offer a unique set of services for children impacted by challenging circumstances.
From specialized car seats to after-school tutoring and applying for government services and advocating for an appropriate school placement, La Rabida goes beyond healthcare, providing all-encompassing support to children and their families as they navigate the unique challenges they face day in and day out.
Nutrition
La Rabida’s registered dietitians provide a variety of nutrition services to support growing children and manage the nutrition intake of children with special needs. Our services include tube feeding, parenteral feeding management, diet education and nutrition plans for children with diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, slow growth, infant feeding, allergies and nutrient deficiencies. Our dietitians work to provide the highest quality of care and understand that each child’s needs are unique.
Social Work
Social workers assist children by assessing their current needs and providing resources to address those needs. Working in both inpatient and outpatient settings, our social workers provide counseling and suggestions to empower children and their families and help them navigate the challenges associated with complex medical needs.
Behavioral Health
We promote holistic care by supporting the emotional and behavioral well-being of children who receive medical care at La Rabida. At La Rabida, we believe that a child’s emotional and behavioral well-being is just as essential as any other routine part of a child’s medical care. That’s why we work collaboratively to integrate our services with physicians and other specialists who are able to provide care to children with interconnected behavioral health needs and medical conditions, such as diabetes and sickle cell disease.
We provide care for children in many ways including long-term outpatient appointments, one-time patient consultations during outpatient medical clinics, short-term care during medical clinics, consultation for children receiving inpatient care and psychological testing for children with sickle cell disease. We also employ evidence based treatments including cognitive behavioral therapies, motivational interviewing and relationship based caring, as well as provide brief screening tools for many children to assess if they need a short-term solution-focused care or if they may benefit from long term care.
If you are interested in a referral or learning more about our services, please contact your child’s physician who can share more information.
Family Patient Education
We provide essential education to ensure that families are confident in their ability to care for their child after being discharged from the hospital. We understand the key role that family members play in the transition from hospital to home care, which is why we provide instructions that are individualized based on a family’s ability to provide physical care and language skills.
Since learning how to care for a medically complex child can be overwhelming for families, we focus on building upon previous knowledge and providing education in gradual steps. We bring in members of our staff from various disciplines including physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, case managers, respiratory therapists, rehabilitation therapists and dietitians to create a teaching plan. Our staff provides interactive education in multiple settings, including at the child’s bedside as well as through classroom instruction for CPR, tracheostomy care, gastrostomy care and home IV care.
Car Seats
Our Child Passenger Safety (CPS) program offers outpatient care seat inspection clinics every month to assess families on their need for an appropriate car seat. If a family’s car seat is determined to be unsafe or inappropriate, the CPS program will provide a car seat for patients or their siblings. We also provide a specialized car bed for patients with oxygen desaturation, heart problems or apnea. To ensure our smallest, most fragile patients can tolerate car seats, the CPS department conducts clinical car seat tests.
As the only statewide program in the country that loans specialized car seats for children with orthopedic problems, car beds for low birth weight newborns and large medical seats for older children with cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions who cannot use seat belts, La Rabida is recognized for its growing leadership in this field.
In addition to the services we provide our patients and their families, our CPS program also provides education to caregivers, as well as safety seats for children with special needs in the community. In 2009, La Rabida was recognized by the Resource Center of the Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria for its commitment to child passenger safety for children with special needs and was made a satellite facility for its special needs loan program through a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). The satellite program serves families and hospitals in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, McHenry and Will counties. For more information, please contact Craig Sjogerman, Child Passenger Safety Technician, at 773-953-5123.
After School Tutoring
La Rabida’s tutoring program is a free, hospital-based service available to our outpatients and their siblings. The program serves children from first grade through high school, with the majority of students from Chicago Public Schools. Our tutoring program is staffed with volunteers from the hospital and community, including retired teachers, corporate employees, university students and La Rabida staff, who assist children with mentoring and homework.
To allow for a valuable relationships to form between the tutor and child, we tutor children one-on-one. The program aims to improve the academic performance of our patients and their siblings, primarily in reading and math. Tutoring sessions are conducted weekly from the first week of October through the first week of June. For more information, please call 773-256-5985.
Case Management
Our case management team works on behalf of our patient families and serves to enhance the overall care being provided to the patient, both during and outside of each primary care visit. This team consists of both nurses and social workers who are skilled in the provision of care to children with chronic health conditions or medical complexity.
Each team member serves as a liaison and interacts on behalf of the patient and their family with their primary and specialty care physicians, both here and at other healthcare institutions as well. This ensures that all patient care related can be met and lead to improved overall health outcomes.
Our case management team is instrumental in providing advocacy support, identification of appropriate resources ranging from school support to housing and or legal support, enhanced illness related education, specialty referral support, and coordination of physician treatment plans. It is due to this increased communication and collective, whole family approach that we are able to meet our patient‘s comprehensive healthcare needs.
