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As an intern at Hopecam in Reston, Va., Carmen Kimball has learned that listening is as important as informing when helping the parents and caregivers of children who are battling cancer.
“You want to respond in a way that’s conducive to your client,” Kimball said, “to really let them tell their story.”
For Kimball, who plans to be a counselor when she finishes her counseling and development graduate studies at George Mason University, it has been a crash course.
For Hopecam—a nonprofit organization that provides computer tablets and Skype connections to kids with cancer so they can maintain relationships with friends and classmates while in the hospital—being staffed with interns from George Mason provides what founder Len Forkas called “a gold mine of resources.”
The collaboration between Mason and Hopecam began two years ago when Mark Ginsberg, dean of Mason’s College of Education and Human Development, met Forkas at a Washington, D.C., event.
Ginsberg, who teaches a health care counseling research seminar in the Counseling and Development Program in the college’s Graduate School of Education, knew a Hopecam internship would provide his students with practical experience.
“It gives them a chance to work with families and to intimately connect with them for a while,” Ginsberg said.
Interns help families set up the Skype links and gather data to help quantify Hopecam’s impact.
Kimball and Sara Shade, another intern from Ginsberg’s class, are measuring how the children use the tablets beyond just connecting with their peers. Are they watching movies, going on social media, using the tablets as an outlet for self-expression?
It also is important to determine if the tablets are easy to use. In that way, organizers at Hopecam, which Forkas said has helped more than 1,000 kids with cancer in 44 states since its 2003 inception, can understand the benefits and impact of the program, and maximize quality of service.
The experience, Kimball said, “gives a solid comprehensive foundation for which we base our approach to the interviews—how to collect comprehensive data as well as helping prepare us for interactions with caregivers. It also allowed me to advocate for children with chronic illness.”
“The benefit is learning about a research method and applying it to real people and families,” said Carol Kaffenberger, an associate professor emerita at Mason who teaches the research seminar with Ginsberg and is also on Hopecam’s board. “Mark and I continue to talk about how this information needs to be part of the training of any counselor.”
Training that will continue at Hopecam.