Overview
On the very rainy day of October 13, 2009, a group of about 25 people gathered in Palo Alto to explore many of the issues related to providing optimal health care to children in California with special needs. This was the second workshop in a series that is being convened by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health as part of the Foundation's project to develop an ideal system of care for these children.
Building on the work accomplished during the first workshop, which was held in September, participants explored conceptual models of existing and potential ideal care systems, examined some of the major problems with the current system, and discussed some key insights into the needs of children and their families as they face the often extreme challenges relating to diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, return to daily life, and transition to adulthood.
The conversations were rich and engaging as the participants worked hard to understand the underlying issues and to develop enduring concepts and solutions. We also modeled the process of implementing a new, ideal system of care, and developed concepts of how the system could be developed and tested through pilot programs and other types of experiments. And we looked at the roles that the Foundation could and should play in bringing the ideal system to reality.
The ideas and concepts developed here will be refined in the coming weeks, and will be discussed in detail with the Foundation board at its meeting in November, and we anticipate that the board to provide direction as to the specific initiatives which the Foundation will begin pursuing in the coming years in this area.
We deeply appreciate the participation of everyone who contributed a day of their time to participate in the workshop and share their insights and expertise! We will continue to keep in contact with you as our work proceeds, and we welcome your thoughts and inputs at any time. Thank you!
Real Time Record
This web site is a record of the event in Palo Alto as it happened - captured in real time and presented here in this web site. The documentation of the session includes the assignments each group was asked to work on and the results they produced. The large group conversations were documented in text and images as well. The documentation was captured throughout the course of each day of the session and is chronological (in the order that things happened). The text is not a transcription of the large group conversations. Rather, it represents the documenters' synthesis of what was being discussed.
This record is intended to be a reminder to the participants of the conversations that took place during the Workshop, to serve as a stimulus for further conversation and to serve as an artifact of the group's work.
For anyone who was not present at the event reading this, you may lose some of the energy and creativity the participants expressed - and some of the ideas may not translate completely without that context.
Images
Photographs of participants and their work are included throughout the Real Time Record. To view a larger version of a marker board or poster, please click on the thumbnail image. The larger image will open in a new window. Close that window to return to where you were.
If you have any questions regarding the material posted here please be in touch with Michelle Sazo at michelle.sazo at lpfch.org or (650) 498-4310 or Michael Kaufman at (510) 903-0652.