Electronic Spring 2023 | Issue 54
Community Engagement: CCOM Medical Students Paint Murals at a Therapeutic Day School
By: Julia Lambert, OMS-II, CCOM
As medical students and physicians, we have a unique obligation to our respective communities. Lawrence Hall is an organization that emphasizes this with respect to a rather impressionable population. The program is a community-based organization committed to helping Chicago’s youth, families, and communities heal from the adverse effects of childhood trauma. Francesca Valenziano, the Volunteer Coordinator, describes the program as annually serving over 1,400 youth and families. The core programs offered help peel back various difficult layers of childhood trauma and foster long-term healing, stability, and connection.
Some of the core programs that Lawrence Hall offers include:
Child and Family Treatment Center (CFTC): Providing treatment intervention for youth experiencing extreme emotional challenges, including residential services as well as behavioral and creative therapies.
Therapeutic Day School: Creating individualized educational programs for every student and fostering autonomy, skill mastery, and experiential learning.
Creative Therapies: Encouraging healing and self-discovery through guided fine art and recreational activities.
Foster Care: Providing safe, nurturing homes for children who have been removed from their birth families due to neglect and/or abuse.
Transitional and Independent Living: Teaching older adolescents ages 17-21 how to successfully live on their own.
With the current mismatch in supply and demand for child psychiatrists, programs such as Lawrence Hall end up doing a lot of heavy lifting in regards to maintenance of mental health within the adolescent population. This program relies on volunteers to work both directly with youth and behind the scenes to foster a beneficial atmosphere for young minds and bodies to grow.
The Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine’s psychiatric interest group, the Midwestern Psychiatric Association, recently volunteered time to explore one of these many opportunities Lawrence Hall provides to help create this nurturing environment for developing minds. Several medical students from the group met on a snowy February morning to help paint murals in the Therapeutic Day School. Francesca states that the project “brought so much light, color, and happiness to the school for all of the middle and high schoolers to see every day as they walk through the halls.” Five different pictures and quotes were crafted amongst the 15 participating students as their way of creating a welcoming environment for the children that call the facility home. Lawrence Hall School Principal and Vice President of Educational Services, Victoria Hicks, thanked everyone for their efforts to provide words of encouragement and support to the students, expressing that both staff and students were surprised to find the murals when they arrived the following week, as they made the school “so much more cheerful.”
Lawrence Hall is always looking for tutors and mentors for those that live in the Child and Family Treatment Center and for those who attend the School. If you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please contact Francesca at fvalenziano@lawrencehall.org or go to the Lawrence Hall website’s volunteer page to learn more at https://www.lawrencehall.org/get-involved/volunteer/