CHALLENGE

The Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) through the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA) was seeking a website for children with a family member who has cancer. The site needed to be based on BCCA’s Art Therapy Family Program (currently only occurring in the Lower Mainland) and would need to focus on encouraging dialogue around how cancer affects the whole family. The website needed to provide a place for families to be together, feel safe and have a dialogue.

STRATEGY

We wanted to bring the most appropriate and engaging elements of the art therapy family sessions to the web environment. We worked with the family counsellors and art therapist to take their expertise, key insights and best practices and translate them into a valuable experience online. Our target audience was 8 to 10 year olds, but needed to consider 5 to 7 and 11 to 12 year olds as well.

CREATIVE AND EXECUTION

Challenged with duplicating the experience of going to an art therapy session (a place in which children are safe to say, create, ask whatever they want), we chose to create an online “world” for them – another place where they are safe to ask, learn, and play.

Rituals and activities that occur during the sessions needed to have an equivalent on the site. During an in-person session, children are instructed to create a “feel good bag,” something they can turn to when they’re feeling sad because it’s full of things that make them happy. Online, there’s a scavenger hunt activity that has children do the same thing. To let children know they’re not alone, they can create “travel buddies” to appear; to give them the ability to express how they’re feeling, they can change the weather; and a travel journal helps them work through their thoughts, feelings and fears. They can print it off and share it with their parents.

Other activities needed to encourage children to be physically active, teach them elementary health and body information, and respond to basic questions/fears about cancer. And let them have fun so they want to return to the site!

Parents also needed access to basic information and resources and be able to monitor their child’s interaction. So while the majority of the site is the child’s “world,” there is a “For Parents” section that also gives them an overview of the children’s site and questions they can bring up with their child to create a dialogue.

RESULTS

The official launch was at the beginning of September. Results will be posted at a later date.

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