The students at Cove Cliff Elementary School have created a beautiful Mother's Day Garden to brighten the lobby and the spirits of patients, visitors and staff at Lions Gate Hospital. The art project is part of a spring fundraising campaign to build a new youth mental health unit in the HOpe Centre at Lions Gate Hospital.
"This will be the first Youth Concurrent Disorders Unit in British Columbia and it will address a critical gap in care for 13 to 18-year-olds facing both mental health and substance use challenges," said Louise Campbell, Director of Development, Lions Gate Hospital Foundation.
The 10-bed unit will provide gold standard psychiatric and medical care as well as access to occupational therapists, teachers and social workers to address the needs of the 'whole person' and ensure youth receive quality continuity of care after they leave hospital and return to the community. The unit is scheduled to open in April 2017. The Lions Gate Hospital Foundation needs to raise $5 million to build the new unit and has currently raised half that amount.
To help raise the remaining $2.5 million, a Mother's Day mailing was recently sent to 55,000 households across the North Shore, which featured a letter from a mother and butterfly stickers for people to return to the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation with a donation for the new unit. As the butterfly stickers arrive each day, volunteers are placing them on the garden art display created by Cove Cliff students.
"We are extremely grateful to the kindergarten, grade two and grade four students of Cove Cliff Elementary who worked on this project, along with their teachers - Mrs. Ehling, Mrs. McAllen and Mrs. Dudley. We appreciate the time and energy that has been put into making the display so incredibly bright and beautiful. It's truly heartwarming to see some of our youngest North Shore residents coming together to improve health care for our community," said Campbell.
The display will be in place in the main lobby at Lions Gate Hospital until Mothers' Day. For more information about the Youth Concurrent Disorders Unit at the HOpe Centre, visit: https://www.lghfoundation.com/
