We are committed to caring for a community that is often overlooked and forgotten: families who have children who have critical, chronic, or terminal illnesses.
These families often face isolation, loneliness, and financial stress. This is especially true for families who have limited resources or support and may be disconnected from their community. We step in to provide encouragement and relationship in their lives.
To serve families, we serve on both the national and local levels. Nationally, we send individual Sunshine Boxes as well as offer a Year of Sunshine where we send monthly care packages and build relationships with families over the course of a year.
Our local ministry In the Mid-South (Memphis, TN, and the surrounding area) enables us to build deeper relationships and serve families in person.
Who We Serve on the Local Level
We serve a community with a large population of medical families because many families relocate to Memphis for medical treatment from across the nation and even from other countries. These families often leave behind their entire support network. We work with social workers from local hospitals to identify families who need support and resources.
In 2021, we implemented our Mid-South Family Care Program as a pilot program to provide in-depth practical, emotional, and spiritual support for families.
Spreading Sunshine Local Family Care has Unique Qualities
When local hospitals refer families to us, we serve them in four distinctive ways:
- Serving the Whole Family
Our program is unique in that we focus on the whole family, whether it’s through local family care or our national program, the Year of Sunshine. Spreading Sunshine recognizes that a child’s critical or chronic illness impacts everyone in the family — from parent-caregivers to siblings and even extended family. Whether it’s providing a respite retreat for an overwhelmed mom or a birthday party for a sibling, we seek to minister to the entire family — not just the child who is facing a critical or chronic illness.
These families often face isolation, loneliness, and financial stress. This is especially true for families who have limited resources or support and may be disconnected from their community. We step in to provide encouragement and relationship in their lives.
For example, on Mother’s Day, we send a Sunshine Box (care package) to the moms in our Year of Sunshine program. One mom told us, “Thank you so much! Today has been so tough for reasons outside my control, but my Mother’s Day Sunshine Box showed up and brought me some light, joy, and love as we wait to hear that my grandma has gone home to be with the Lord. God used you all to give me a great big hug! Thank you so very, very much! God always shows up with some extra love just when we need it most.”
- Serving Families in Crisis Who Need Community
While some families might be in crisis for a short time, many of the families we serve have a child with significant long-term and/or lifelong illnesses. Our program doesn’t have an expiration date. Even families with strong support systems find that over the course of several years, those support systems fade when needs persist. Spreading Sunshine works to be a consistent, reliable support system for families. Our touchpoints may lessen after 12-18 months, but the relationships remain. Ultimately our goal is to connect the families with a local community of support to facilitate ongoing, lifelong support. (e.g. church or group of friends).
A Sunshine Mom expressed what this supportive community meant to her, “We’re so thankful that a group of people would care so much and are so willing to walk this journey with us as a family.”
- Serving Terminally Ill Children
Our most precious families are those who are in hospice/palliative care. We offer spiritual support, provide opportunities to make memories or celebrate the child, and when needed, provide financial support for funeral costs.
- Serving with a Customized Plan for Families
Just as each medical diagnosis is unique so are the needs of each family. We work with hospital social workers and parents/caregivers to identify those needs and customize a support plan for families.
Meeting the Needs of Families
Spreading Sunshine meets practical, emotional, and spiritual needs as well as builds personal relationships with families. Through these relationships, we have learned that often families simply want a friend to visit with them, to listen without giving advice, to lighten their load by taking one thing off of their long to-do list, and to pray to the One who is the source of hope, comfort, and strength.
If you’d like to help families who are facing pediatric illness, we’d love to partner with you. Whether you want to volunteer or donate to meet practical needs for families, you can make a difference in their lives.
