Family-Centered Care Services for Children’s Heart Center Families

Family-Centered Care services are available to Children’s Heart Center families whose children are patients in:

Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU)
Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU)
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
3 West

Parent Mentors

Children’s Heart Center parent mentors are parents of children who have had multiple heart surgeries and treatment at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. They are trained to support parents of current patients.

Mentorship is available throughout a child’s diagnosis and treatment. Parents can meet with mentors at the hospital bedside or can speak by telephone. Parent mentors may talk with families about:

Getting ready to go home (discharge)
Navigating the CVICU/PICU and 3 West
Helping your child cope in the hospital
Taking care of the caregiver
Your child’s nutrition and feeding challenges
Keeping your child healthy
Craft hour

“The Parent Mentor program was not available during any of my daughter’s hospitalizations. I wish we had it as a resource! It would have been so helpful to talk to another parent who was further along in her child’s journey with chronic illness - both when we received her diagnosis the day after her birth and for all the new challenges faced with each consecutive surgery and hospitalization.”

Gwynne Corrigan, on why she became a parent mentor

Please contact your social worker if you would like to meet with a parent mentor.

Children’s Heart Center Family Resources

These resources were created by Packard Children’s Hospital families for your family. All documents below are in PDF format.