At the center of nearly every major fundraising campaign is a compelling opportunity or need, a key goal that is essential to the organization’s mission yet requires a robust response from the philanthropic community in order to achieve.
While The Way Forward: Campaign for McLean boasts numerous mission-critical funding objectives, its most ambitious and talked about goal is the $125 million, approximately 90,000-square-foot child and adolescent campus.
This opportunity has proven meaningful to many donors, who have rallied around the needs of young people with mental health challenges and their families.
While a newly built, warm, and welcoming healing environment will benefit our youngest patients and their families the most, the faculty, staff, and trainees who work there will also gain a great deal from the collaborative opportunities of serving young patients and students within the same customized facility.
Waiting with excitement for all the promise of the new child and adolescent campus to become real are Daniel P. Dickstein, MD, FAAP, chief of the Nancy and Richard Simches Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Ralph J. Buonopane, PhD, the division’s director of clinical operations.
“If the philanthropic response to the project to date tells us anything,” said Dickstein, “it’s that our donors care about what we do for children and adolescents and are willing to pull together to realize this shared vision. It’s very exciting.”
“It’s touching as well,” added Buonopane. “People clearly understand the importance of providing educational and emotional support for children and their families.”
Coming Together
The child and adolescent campus will be home to McLean’s Arlington School and Pathways Academy, as well as several residential programs and partial hospital services.
While some services will remain geographically distributed in the community to enable greater access to care in complement to the new campus, the co-location of patients and programs, clinicians and investigators, nurses and social workers, and teachers and trainees on the new campus will lead to daily knowledge-sharing and a synergy between delivering evidence-based care and conducting new investigations inspired by clinical needs.
A child or adolescent might be a patient in multiple programs as their care evolves. With the new campus, they can be part of those programs without having to navigate between different buildings and sometimes towns; they can stay in this bright, attractive space that is specially designed to meet their needs while they focus on the hard work of healing and recovery.
Clinicians, researchers, and teachers will also enjoy the opportunity to work together, consult with each other, and build closer care teams with patients and families in the center.
“It will be interesting to pull together the programs and the schools,” said Dickstein. “For example, staff will have opportunities to counsel adolescents struggling with a range of issues and see how they present in a school setting. It’s a unique opportunity for all of us.”
Designed for Healing
It’s not just the people and the programs that will distinguish the new child and adolescent campus. The design of the physical space will aid in healing as well.
“A lot of thought has been given to allowing for natural light and beautiful outdoor spaces where our kids can engage in healthy activities and self-reflection,” explained Dickstein.
On McLean’s Belmont campus—where most of the buildings were constructed prior to World War I—the new building will be a beacon of hope and a signal that McLean is prioritizing youth and recognizing the critical need for early intervention and treatment.
Children and families will access different parts of the campus based on their needs. A dedicated gymnasium and ample green space will enhance the experience. Students at either of McLean’s schools will feel like they’re going to a school building instead of a hospital.
The design for the child and adolescent campus, noted Buonopane, is intended to “create a light-filled, comfortable environment that exudes a sense of hope, change, and community.”
When asked what they are most looking forward to once the campus is open for business, Dickstein said, “Seeing all the hard work paid off and offering a transformative experience for patients and families,” while Buonopane responded, “The kids. I look forward to seeing them arrive and having them realize that they’re not alone, that we’ve built this just for them—that there’s hope and we are there for every one of them.”
While all those things are true now, they will ring truer within a child and adolescent campus that matches the level of care we provide to our youngest patients and their families.
Thanks to the many extraordinarily generous donors, The Way Forward Campaign is getting McLean closer every day to making these dreams a reality.
