Therapy and Tutoring Services - Chai Lifeline Canada

As our Family Services Department continues to expand, so too does our innovation in providing various therapies for clients. Currently, Chai Lifeline Canada provides art, drama, play, equine, and conventional therapy. Last year, group therapy was provided to parents of chronically ill children, parents who have cancer, parents supporting a sick spouse, and moms with cancer.

Art Therapy

Chai Lifeline Canada provides art therapy to clients, enabling them to express emotions and work through issues through the creative use of visual art media. Chai Lifeline has a trained art therapist on staff, and occasionally employs part-time art-therapy students and professionals.

Drama Therapy

Chai Lifeline Canada has offered drama therapy for children organized by the Montreal office.

Equine Therapy

Chai Lifeline Canada has an ongoing relationship with a farm that provides facilities for equine therapy. The therapeutic riding program in Toronto helps children recover from the lingering effects of treatment by infusing riders with confidence, strength, and camaraderie. The results have been extraordinary – reduction in anxiety, renewed sense of self, a feeling of mastery, connection with others in the same situation, and pride in their newfound skill.

Play Therapy
Chai Lifeline Canada provides play therapy to clients who are dealing with trauma, such as the death of a parent or sibling. Through play therapy, children come to feel comfortable processing their own emotions, articulating their issues, and working towards resolutions.

Tutoring
With clients in and out of the hospital, clients often need tutoring to keep up with their schoolwork. Treatments such as chemo and radiation can have very serious detrimental effects on memory and learning. Tutoring may also need to address some severe cases where clients must learn or re-learn basic skills, such as reading, which they missed acquiring due to undergoing intensive treatment for several months or years.

Conventional Therapy
On an individual basis, Chai Lifeline Canada funds sessions for clients in need of counselling with professional therapists.

Hours of Tutoring

Hours of Therapy

Hours of Group Therapy

We want to share with Chai Lifeline Canada our appreciation for Equine therapy and our recent observations in positive improvement in D's life and happiness.

D has had 3 occurrences of cancer within an 8 year time frame. Her cancer did not respond to the chemotherapy; she has been diagnosed with anxiety, continues oral chemotherapy with endless hospital appointments, exams, and procedures. She is not cured and she is not in remission.

D recently told me that there was nothing that she wanted except to be free from pain, hospitals, and suffering. In the past few weeks, we have seen D make huge efforts to attend her riding sessions. She looks forward to seeing "her" horse and seeing her new friends at the stable. She has such extreme fatigue from her cancer and chemo, but she finds a special energy for the hour that she rides! She has reduced anxiety from sheer happiness of being on her horse as well as the support of the volunteers who lead and walk next to the horse during the session.

Her neurologist at Sick Kids has observed that she saw D a month ago, and then saw her last week, and that D is a very different and positive girl. D was present as in participating and interacting with her doctor, D's speech was more clear, and that unprompted, D showed her new riding boots and how she could walk flat so she can ride stirrups with heels down! Her doctor sees that D looks and acts happy now. And in a medically unexplained effect, the high pressure behind D's eyes has reduced. This is a huge turnaround for D.

Our family can not thank Chai Lifeline Canada enough for creating such a wonderful program. We only hope that it can continue so that D and other children like her can have such an awesome experience. ~ From a Chai Mom

36 HOURS.

$500,000

2X MATCH!

Minimum $18 donation per tribute card