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Latest News…
20th Anniversary Care for Kids Benefit...
On Saturday, April 21, 2012, hundreds of Sheppard Pratt friends attended the 20th Anniversary Care for Kids Benefit -- an exclusive evening with The Manhattan Transfer at Rams Head Live. Event proceeds supported the Care for Kids Fund, which supports patient and student needs that Sheppard Pratt is unable to meet through its operational budget alone. In recent years, our youngest patients have received clothing, prescription medication, playground equipment, musical instruments and much more. Students have benefited from field trips, therapeutic horseback riding, bicycles, computers and books. Our 20th anniversary benefit raised almost $150,000 to replenish the Care for Kids Fund.
Women's Hospital Foundation...
Due to the continuing generosity of the Women's Hospital Foundation, our Neuropsychiatry Program is expanding to include specialty clinics in the areas of Traumatic Brain Injury with a focus on sports concussions and military blast injuries, Memory Impairment, and Autism, as well as adding capacity to support community outreach and research in these areas. The picture below includes Pedie Killebrew, a trustee of both the Women's Hospital Foundation and Sheppard Pratt, along with the director of the program, Vassilis Koliatsos, M.D.
Important Message from Dr. Steven Sharfstein
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to share with you that former First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, announced our $13.2 million New Horizons In Compassionate Care campaign last night at our annual meeting. What is most exciting is that we have raised over $10.5 million of our goal already.
With this campaign, Sheppard Pratt looks to the future by building on the momentum of the successful hospital campaign. Over the next 18 months, we are undertaking an appeal for community support for urgently needed health system priorities, including enhancing the special education programs to meet the current needs of our students, supporting the unique work of our Neuropsychiatry Program, and launching a workforce development initiative to support 500+ individuals. A strategic investment of $13.2 million is necessary to continue providing optimal, state-of-the-art service to our patients and students. An overview of our funding priorities follows.
Currently, vocational training, a key pathway to opportunity and success for our students, needs to be expanded at all of our schools. Our teachers are also requesting cutting-edge interactive technology for their classrooms to ensure that our students reach their full academic potential, because our students have significant attention-deficit challenges and the vast majority are visual learners. To meet these needs, we will invest in the infrastructure necessary to implement new vocational tracks and introduce wireless tablets and ancillary equipment into classrooms.
Additionally, the students at our new flagship school, The Forbush School at Glyndon, are not fully experiencing the potential of their physical educational programming, because the school does not have a gym. Regular physical activity offers many psychological and mental benefits in addition to the physical ones. Therefore, we are committed to building a gym for our Glyndon students to establish physical education as a vital part of the school curriculum.
The potential for the Neuropsychiatry Program to save lives and alleviate suffering has never been greater. To achieve this preeminence in the field of neuropsychiatric patient care and research, it is imperative that the program create three new specialties: Autism and Developmental Disabilities Clinic; Memory Clinic; and Traumatic Brian Injury/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic. For these specialties to become a reality, we need to recruit three premiere physicians to lead patient care and research in each area and purchase an electronic medical record with capability for data mining and transfer to populate research and scholarly data banks.
To address the crisis of severe rates of unemployment for individuals with serious mental illness, Sheppard Pratt has launched a Workforce Development Initiative to support 500+ individuals. The unemployment rate among this group is disturbingly 90 percent, the worst level of employment of any group of people with disabilities. Through approaches including supported employment and other innovations being piloted in this project, we will increase employment outcomes for individuals with serious mental illness, thereby reducing poverty.
To learn more about any of the exciting initiatives I mentioned above, please call Marguerite Kelley at 410-938-4018. We look forward to partnering with you in the months ahead to make our vision for the future a reality.
Thank you for your continuing dedication to Sheppard Pratt.
Sincerely,
Steven S. Sharfstein, M.D.
President and Chief Executive Officer
Charitable giving at Sheppard Pratt…
We are very pleased to share with you that, despite the continuing economic uncertainty, we have launched several new initiatives at Sheppard Pratt due to the generosity of our donors during the past fiscal year. A few of these programs are highlighted below, so you can see the immediate and significant impact charitable giving has at Sheppard Pratt. Thank you for your continuing support!
Reduction of Seclusion and Restraint: as part of a system-wide program to reduce the need for seclusion and restraint, we have built and equipped numerous “comfort rooms”. These rooms provide a sanctuary for patients and students to discover new coping skills. Comfort rooms have a variety of soothing furniture, exercise equipment, music, games and independent activities that help patients and students self-regulate their behavior and learn coping skills they can utilize when they are no longer in Sheppard Pratt’s care.
Wellness Program at the Forbush School at Hunt Valley: this program is a collaborative effort with Towson University allowing students from the Forbush School at Hunt Valley, a school for children and adolescents with autism, to travel to the Towson University campus and participate in a structured physical fitness and nutrition education program administered by Towson students and Forbush staff.
WeatherBug at the Forbush School at Glyndon: this program combines a fully automated weather tracking station with online, standards-based learning to deliver a fascinating educational experience for all of the K-12 students at the Forbush School at Glyndon, Sheppard Pratt’s flagship special education school. In addition to offering the hope of higher test scores, WeatherBug’s affiliation with nearly 100 television stations will mean increased awareness of the vital role our special education program plays in the community.
Music Program at the Mann Residential Treatment Center: this program provides instruments, a sound system and the cost of a part-time musical instructor for the Mann Residential Treatment Center, a self-contained therapeutic educational and recreational program for adolescents with severe behavioral problems. As the program develops, students will perform for parents, Sheppard Pratt staff and the wider community.