For Bal Sahota, work doesn’t end at 5 p.m.

Bal Sahota is Richmond health care’s very own Clark Kent.

By day, Sahota is the hospital’s clinical educator in Home Health. By night – well, okay, after work — she focuses her energy on Lasting Magic, a charity she founded that enables children to create lasting memories with their parents or loved ones who are sick or dying.

Recently, Lasting Magic donated $5,000 to Richmond Hospital’s Palliative Care Unit for furniture with the intent to develop a Family Resource area to support families during end of life. The new space will give children and their families a suitable space in which to grieve.

Click here for more information about Lasting Magic.  The story below appeared recently in the Richmond Review.

Great work, Bal!

New space helps children grieve at Richmond Hospital

Martin van den Hemel

Richmond Review

February 2015

Children grieving the death of a loved one now have a place to turn to for support at Richmond Hospital.

On Friday afternoon, a brightly-lit new family space, complete with furniture, books,  a television and a piano, was unveiled in the hospital’s palliative care unit.

Noele Bird, a registered clinical counsellor, said the new space—which had its furniture, television and books donated by Lasting MAGIC Society—was precisely what the community needs.

“I think what’s missing in Richmond is services that support children who are grieving. There are those services in other municipalities, but they’re missing here in Richmond,” Bird said. “I think there needs to be some education around how we can support children’s grief, and how to include them and how to grieve as families and how to normalize death for them.”

Having books and art material will teach children that grieving is normal, and allow them to express themselves.

“Children’s language is play and metaphor, so if we can have these kinds of supports here for them so that they can process their grief, so that they can know that they’re not alone, that it’s okay whatever they’re feeling, is normal and okay. And it’s okay to express it and it’s okay to talk about it,” Bird said.

This will help children feel included, let them prepare for what’s coming, and as a result they’re less scared and less anxious, she said.

Dr. Kara Schneider, a family doctor training at Richmond Hospital’s palliative care unit, said it’s really important that every community be able to support patients at the end of life.

“Over the last few years, certainly within the Canadian public, people have an increasing awareness of how valuable the support for families is with respect to palliative care,” she said.

Lasting MAGIC (Memories Are Gifts in Children) is a volunteer-run non-profit charity that provides grief and bereavement counselling to children with a terminally ill parent, and honours the parent by fulfilling a wish that will create memories for their child. The charity (lastingmagic.org) fundraises and accepts sponsorships and donations which go directly to helping children where and when they need it most.

“I think we were just elated that the message was sent that it’s important that children and families have a place to sit, talk and reflect,” said Bal Sahota, who founded Lasting MAGIC Society in 2007.

The society normally works with lower-income families, and helps set up an education savings plan for children who have a lost a parent, starting it out with $1,000.

“Many kids, if they don’t find their way, end up straying and getting involved in other things,” she said.

While the death of a loved one is emotionally painful, it’s part of the normal process of life, she said.