Donation to Children's of Alabama helps families undergoing treatment

The Child Life program at Children's of Alabama does incredible work to enrich the lives of their patients. Child life specialists work hard each day to help children and their families understand procedures they're about to experience, while also providing fun, recreational activities despite challenging circumstances.

To help ensure this important work keeps happening, Spire recently made a $20,000 donation to the hospital through our Spire Serves program. This funding will provide an assortment of tools, materials and equipment for the specialists, and also supported the hospital's annual Valentine’s card drive for patients.

"Making communities a better place for everyone is what we strive to do at Spire, and we’ve seen first-hand how our partnership with Children's has done this," said Joe Hampton, president of Spire Alabama, Gulf Coast and Mississippi.

Children's shared the following news release, thanking Spire for its generosity. 

Child Life specialists make a difference in the lives of children in the hospital

BIRMINGHAM (March 25, 2022) – March is Child Life Month, an opportunity to recognize the efforts of child life specialists and the impact they have on hospitalized children.

Child life specialists are trained, child-development professionals who work in health care settings helping children and their families with the medical process. At Children’s of Alabama, the Child Life team recognizes that illness and hospitalization are stressful events in the lives of children and their families. By using age-appropriate education, preparation and supportive activities, they strive to minimize that stress and help children and their families cope positively with their health care experience.

“We recognize that it can be a very stressful and challenging time,” Children’s Child Life specialist Noelle Connor said. “It can be filled with uncertainty, it can be filled with scary procedures, it can be painful at times. And we want to help the children cope with that.”
Some of the services the Children’s Child Life team provides include recreational activities that encourage normal development and a sense of fun despite challenging circumstances. They also offer play opportunities and peer interactions in play rooms. They use medical preparation materials to help children understand procedures they’re about to experience.
In order to offer these services, Children’s needs an assortment of tools, materials and equipment. Much of that is available thanks to the generosity of Spire. In August 2021, Spire donated $20,000 to the Children’s Child Life team. The donation also helps cover annual Valentine’s card drive for patients in the hospital at Children’s.

“The Child Life program at Children’s does incredible work to enrich the lives of their patients,” Joe Hampton, president of Spire Alabama, Gulf Coast and Mississippi, said. “That’s why all of us at Spire are passionate about supporting this program. Making communities a better place for everyone is what we strive to do at Spire, and we’ve seen first-hand how our partnership with Children’s has done this.”

“We are very thankful for it,” Connor said. “I don’t think that we’d be able to do such needed and such impactful interventions without the materials that we use to do it, and so their generosity in donating toward that program is something that we’re really thankful for.”