When children are in hospital, they can often feel powerless, anxious, isolated or bored and our Clowndoctors aim to overcome those feelings by providing lots of unexpected humour and fun.
We also want the parents’ and families’ experiences to be less stressful too, so, whenever appropriate, we involve mums and dads, brothers and sisters, and other visitors too. A roomful of laughing children, mums, dads, brothers, sisters and friends is great medicine for everyone. And laughter has lasting effects on mood, resilience and self-esteem.
The Clowndoctors also visit children and young people at Rachel House and Robin House, run by Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS). They are wonderful environments to play in where there is more space and time to allow for in-depth interactions and the Clowndoctors have developed many lasting long-term relationships with the children and young people. During Covid we were able to continue these relationships with our virtual programme in partnership with CHAS.
The Clowndoctors have made lots of friends in hospitals and hospices. Some of these children are now grown-ups with children of their own, and they, very nicely, still send us messages about how our visits made them feel better when they were in hospital.
If you have a visit from the Clowndoctors, we hope you will remember it for a long time too.
This is how it works
When our Clowndoctors arrive at a hospital, the staff will let us know which children to see that day, and there might be lots of reasons why they have picked those children. We work closely with the staff, and they know which kids will get a big lift and a boost from our visits. They let us know a little bit about each child, their abilities, their needs and maybe what they like or don’t like, so that the Clowndoctors can create a unique visit.
For example, our Clowndoctors might use slapstick (staff told them the child is feeling shy, so the two Clowndoctors are trying to come through the door really quietly), or they might create a new song (staff told them the child is going to lose their hair, so they sing a song that celebrates dad’s awesome bald head), or they might do their dog impressions (staff told them the child loves dogs, and the Clowndoctors want to show off their impressions, but keep doing other animals by accident) or they might pretend the room is under the sea (staff told them the child loves swimming – watch out for sharks!) or they decide to clean the windows, which ends in a slapstick fight as to which Clowndoctor can clean it the best (staff told them they can’t go in the child’s room due to infection control, so it’s a visit through the window, transforming the view into the corridor).
Each visit is ‘made to measure’ and improvised, and each visit is focussed on the child and their needs, bringing humour, sensitivity, and positivity to the room.
