Team IMPACT – Addressing Social Isolation in Sick Kids Head On
by Rachel Rogovin, MSW, LICSW
On the first day of my second-year clinical social work internship, I immediately fell in love with pediatric oncology social work – the children and young adults, the families, the large academic medical center, and the interdisciplinary team of providers. I thought I would be a pediatric oncology social worker for my entire career. Almost 13 years later, I changed my mind.
As a peds onc social worker, my days were physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting, yet filled with meaning and inspiration. A typical day was dedicated to family meetings, discussions about a child's new cancer diagnosis or the possibility of a relapse, the risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial, and more. There were impromptu counseling sessions in crowded waiting rooms and time spent helping children and young adults, who would not survive their disease, verbalize their wishes and build their legacy. I loved the work and felt professionally fulfilled. I knew I was genuinely making a difference but would be lying if I said that this difference came without a cost.
I always prided myself on having healthy professional boundaries and maintaining an appropriate life balance. I imagined I had a shut-off switch I’d hit when I left the hospital each night. It was my signal that I was departing one world – a world of needle sticks and chemotherapy treatments – and entering another world – one of grocery shopping and dinner with friends. It wasn't until the birth of my daughter, almost nine years later, that I began to realize that my shut-off switch wasn't working as well as I had thought. It turns out, as an oncology social worker, grief becomes cumulative over time (Stearns, 2001), as providers "see more death in a year than most others see in an entire career or even in their lifetime." After almost a decade of this work, the cumulative grief began to take its toll on me.
In 2018, I was invited to join Team IMPACT as their Director of Clinical Services. Team IMPACT mitigates the social isolation and chronic loneliness that so often plague children and adolescents who have life-altering diagnoses by connecting them with college athletic teams in their local communities. Such children, as a result of their diagnosis or treatment, are deprived of social interactions with peers and team sports, and often are confined to their homes or hospitals for extended periods of time. They are deprived of the basic need to belong, and it’s a side effect often left untreated. In this new role, my job would be to build an evidence-based clinical foundation for the program to ensure participants didn't just have fun but experienced tangible clinical benefits. This was the opportunity that would allow me to continue serving the population I was so passionate about – children with chronic or life-threatening illness and their families – while stepping back from direct practice. So, I gave an enthusiastic "Yes!" to the offer.
This new chapter in my career is certainly different, yet my work at Team IMPACT is more fulfilling than I could have imagined. I am building something meaningful that’s changing the lives of the children we serve, as well as the college athletes they’re matched with, which, as a parent of a growing person, I find more intrinsically beneficial each day.
I manage a clinical team, primarily comprised of master's-level social workers (eight in total), who work diligently to facilitate relationships between our child/adolescent participants and their teams. They help our participants identify and operationalize clinical goals to support improved resiliency, socialization, and health-promotion skills. The clinicians then guide the team to create a safe and caring environment that will allow their new teammate to work toward his or her own personal goals.
Our work relies on face-to-face interaction on many levels. With the coronavirus forcing everyone to stay at home, the organization had to quickly shift its entire business model to a virtual one. Figuring out how to continue our work while 50 percent of our program participants (the children) are at high risk wasn’t easy. Yet, we did, and I am so proud of how quickly our team pivoted to keep the programs running in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. We successfully transitioned in less than 48 hours, and our child-team matches continue to happen, with a long list of families still interested.
Ongoing, in addition to overseeing our clinical team, I drive our quality improvement initiatives, program evaluation, and strategic planning. As we scale Team IMPACT nationally, I will continue to collaborate with an interdisciplinary team of nonprofit leaders to treat the social isolation and loneliness that often come with childhood illness, giving the children we serve the community and sense of belonging they need.
References
Stearns, N. (2001). Professional issues in oncology social work. In M. Lauria, P. J. Clarke, J. Hermann, & N. Stearns (Eds.), Social work in oncology: Supporting survivors, families, and caregivers (pp. 213–232). American Cancer Society.
Rachel Rogovin, MSW, LICSW, is Director of Clinical Services at Team IMPACT, a national nonprofit organization. Before joining Team IMPACT in 2018, Rachel spent 13 years as a pediatric oncology social worker at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI. Rachel is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Pediatric Oncology Social Workers.