Hannah's Friends now has its own website. We highly recommend you give it a look by clicking here if you would like additional details on this program.

The challenges presented to families who are caring for a child with a life-limiting or life-threatening illness are quite formidable. It is our hope that we can make those challenges more manageable through a community volunteer program that brings compassionate assistance to the children and their families.

The HEAL Project is committed to developing new community based volunteer programs to support Pediatric Palliative Care (PPC), which serves the needs of children with life-threatening illness.

Our first such innovative volunteer program, Hannah's Friends, augments traditional pediatric palliative care. The purpose of this program is to provide no-cost practical, spiritual and emotional support to the children and their families through a network of experienced volunteers who are trained specifically for PPC support.

Hannah's Friends is not intended to be solely a hospice volunteer program. The primary focus of the program is to offer services to families regardless of whether or not their child is under hospice care. Our goal is to provide a variety of support services to families whose children are dealing with a life-threatening illness. Our volunteers are hospice qualified, which provides families continuity of service if they will require hospice care in their future.

The pilot program is presently underway in Northern California. More details can be found below.

The book Hannah's Gift, Lessons from a Life Fully Lived is a true story about 3-year-old Hannah who lived with cancer for almost a year before she died in 1994. The book is written by her mother, Maria Housden. The story of Hannah's short, but fully-lived, life warms your heart as this 3-year-old conveys a knowledge and a wisdom about facing the challenges of her illness that are so touching.

Hannah has already inspired many through the Hannah's Gift book. She also inspired this HEAL Project program, which will aspire to inspire and guide volunteers, to compassionately comfort children and families throughout the child's process.

It is our goal to fully fund our services through donations from philanthropic sources. The details of the program are now unfolding. If you wish to learn more, there is additional program information below.

Click here to download a Volunteer Application.

In June 2006 PBS aired a documentary titled A LION IN THE HOUSE that illustrates very clearly the need for Hannah's Friends. The documentary was filmed at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, where children find support and treatment for cancer and other diseases, while their families learn to cope with the demands of caregiving as the hospital’s doctors and researchers work to find new treatments and cures. Filmmakers, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert took their cameras into these dilemmas and inside hospital rooms, family homes and medical staff meetings, providing audiences with a rare look behind-the-scenes as families and medical professionals wrestle with difficult questions and negotiate a plan of action.

Tim and Marietha Woods

The documentary follows the stories of five exceptional children and their families as they confront pediatric cancer. From the trauma of diagnosis to the physical toll of treatment, this series documents the stresses that can tear a family apart as well as the courage of children facing the possibility of death with honesty, dignity and humor. As the film compresses six years into one narrative, it puts viewers in the shoes of parents, physicians, nurses, siblings, grandparents and social workers who struggle to defeat an indiscriminate and predatory disease.

Agonizing questions arise: in the face of a persistently negative prognosis, how do parents and children find hope for each other? When does optimism become denial? When a child doesn’t respond, at what point should treatment be stopped? And who should make the decisions—the parents, the doctors, or the children themselves?

Hannah, April 1994, Age 3 3 1/2 months before her death

The HEAL Project is presently accepting volunteer applications for its Hannah's Friends pilot program, which is active in a limited geographic region at this time. The program will provide no-cost practical, spiritual and emotional support to families in their homes as well as augmenting traditional hospice care in homes, residential hospices, hospitals and other facilities where children with a life-threatening illness may receive care.

Prospective volunteers can participate in a variety of roles, which will be determined from your application and subsequent interviews with Hannah's Friends staff. Due to the sensitive nature of this program, prospective volunteers must complete a training program developed by the HEAL Project specifically for Hannah's Friends. Individuals with hospice experience or parents and siblings that have had their own family experience with life-threatening illness are encouraged to apply.

The goal of the pilot program is to create the model for expansion of the concept to a national program. The pilot program in Northern California in Sonoma County is being initiated as a collaboration with the Children's Cancer Community (CCC), formerly the Sonoma & Solano Children's Cancer Foundation located in Northern CA. CCC has been providing emotional and financial support to families of children with cancer for 10 years.

The support to be offered by Hannah's Friends volunteers will span a broad spectrum of possibilities…practical support such as cooking, washing dishes, helping siblings with their homework, or providing them companionship, to more critical support of the ill child and the parents. This volunteer force will be comprised of individuals from a variety of disciplines from young adults to a core team of professionals skilled in dealing with the multitude of issues that a family may face on their journey.

It is our pilot program goal to demonstrate that Hannah's Friends can help facilitate more opportunites to provide meaningful practical, emotional and spiritual care by getting volunteers from their own communities trained and involved. At the same time we believe these community volunteers can become guides for parents as they embark on a most emotional and stressful journey of caring for a child with a life-threatening illness.