Family Activities and Support

At Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, we offer a comprehensive range of support services and programs for you and your child. These services are designed to provide you with the resources and support you need to make your Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital experience as productive – and pleasant – as possible. 

Support Programs

Specialized staff to help you during your stay:

  • Social Workers – Assigned to each unit and provide support during your hospital stay. They also assist you with your child's discharge needs.
  • Child Life Specialists – Help patients become more comfortable with medical procedures and their hospital stay through medical play, pain management and distraction, and anxiety and fear relief.
  • Family Advocate – Provides emotional support and helps you navigate your hospital stay. The Advocate can also provide you with communication tools that will help you be an active partner on your child's healthcare team. To contact our Family Advocate, call 954-265-0191.
  • Patient & Family Care and Discharge Coordinators – Help assist you with your child's plan of care.

Emotional and spiritual support services:

  • Child Life Program – Our Child Life Program is designed to help minimize any stress that your child is experiencing and to create a positive, nurturing environment for your entire family.
  • JDCH Mentor Program – When a family is newly diagnosed or living with a chronic illness, it is helpful to meet families that have gone through the same experience. Our Family Advocate will match you to a family based on diagnosis and/or experience. Our program is affiliated with Mended Little Hearts (cardiac) and the Pep Squad (diabetes). To schedule a meeting, please call 954-265-1070.
  • A chaplain is on call for spiritual guidance and can be reached at 954-265-5153.  
  • Support groups – Including breastfeeding and NICU support groups.

Interpreter Services 

South Florida is a vibrant multicultural community, so we continually strive to provide patients and their families with medical care in their own language. Every facility has signs in both English and Spanish, and many educational materials and brochures are available in Spanish as well. We also maintain a list of employees who speak a wide range of languages. Please ask your nurse or medical caregiver about arranging translation services, or call 954-276-5293.

If you or your child require accommodations with low-vision and hearing-impaired telephone devices or closed captioning, our Patients With Special Needs Office can help. To learn more about our available special needs services or to arrange for assistance, please call the Patients With Special Needs coordinator at 954-276-5293.        

Love Jen Family Support Center

Located on the fourth floor, this spacious center is an area where families and patients can get together in a homelike environment. There is a large-screen TV, comfortable seating area and a kitchen area, café tables, laundry facilities, a playroom for young children and a Teen Room for older patients.

Playrooms

For young children, there are inviting playrooms in the Love Jen Family Center and on the third and fourth floors of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. The playrooms have toys, games, medical play and arts and crafts. Special hospital events are also hosted here.
Please call the Child Life Department at 954-265-0171 to confirm hours.

Toddler Time, located in the Love Jen Family Center playroom, provides our youngest patients with time in the playroom with or without their parents. This allows children to socialize while caregivers take a break. Hours: Monday through Friday, 11 am – noon.

Relaxation Room

The Relaxation Room is available for patients and families to relax in a calm environment, where they can sit in a massage chair, listen to soothing music or snuggle up with a book from the library. Please call our family advocate at 954-265-0191 for more information.

This room also houses the Serenity Salon for convenient hairstyling needs. A stylist is here every Tuesday. To schedule an appointment, please call our family advocate at 954-265-0191 or sign up on the list posted at the salon on Monday nights.

Teen Rooms

There are three Teen Rooms for teens to relax, play games and make friends their own ages who are going through similar challenges. The teen rooms are in the Love Jen Family Center and on the third and fourth floors of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. Please call the Child Life Department at 954-265-0171 to confirm times of availability.

Internet Cafe

A comfortable countertop in the Love Jen Family Center with laptops for easy wireless access to the internet.

To learn more about these rooms, or to schedule an appointment in the Relaxation Room, call our Family Advocate program at 954-265-1070.