Children’s Hospice: A Place to Stay, A Place to Play

Children diagnosed with terminal illness most often receive end-of-life care in a traditional hospital setting or at home due to the dearth of children’s hospices in the United States. Children hospices provide an environment that not only is aesthetically designed for children, but also is attentive to the specific physical and emotional needs of their special patients and their families. The purpose of this thesis is to define a model of children’s hospice that integrates the successful features of similar hospitals throughout the United States and adapts them to the writer’s home region in upstate New York. To accomplish this goal, the writer analyzes the features of existing children’s hospice centers as well as prominent children’s hospitals nationwide and examines their strengths and weaknesses to determine the ideal environment for a children’s hospice center