Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital’s mission is to create a world of possibility by supporting children and youth living with disability, medical complexity, illness, and injury. Based in Toronto, Holland Bloorview is a research hospital that serves children and youth from across Ontario and Canada.
Holland Bloorview sees over 2,000 unique diagnoses annually including brain injury, cerebral palsy and developmental delay – serving over 7,500 families over the course of a year. They believe in taking a holistic approach to assisting young people through physical and cognitive development as well as life skills such as employment readiness, transitioning to adult services and friendship. Families also have access to programming in music, arts, fitness, science, and technology.
The Shared Mission Between Holland Bloorview and Piktochart
The core idea that defines Piktochart is to empower people to create real, meaningful human connections through visual stories. Stories that move us, inspire us, and leave us better off than we were before. And we love working with like-minded users that want to use visuals to help others share their hopes, needs, and desires.
Holland Bloorview is dedicated to creating resources for families who have children with disabilities and to help them get around in the health system and advocate for themselves.
Families, children and youth with disabilities share stories about their hopes, needs and desires with people in their community every day. Visiting a doctor they haven’t seen before, meeting a new teacher, or spending time in a new class are examples of when storytelling can happen.
When Susan Cosgrove, a family leader volunteer who partners with hospital staff on a range of decision-making, reached out to Christine Provvidenza and others on the knowledge translation team, who help to put research knowledge into action, for help to communicate her son’s needs, they immediately thought of infographics.
Susan found that infographics helped communicate her son’s needs effectively. Bringing in the client and family-integrated care team, which provides support to families raising children with disabilities, the group organized a workshop to teach families how to use infographics as a tool to advocate for, and inform services and care.
We first learned that Piktochart was being used in Holland Bloorview’s infographic workshop to help parents share a child’s story through Twitter.
The tweet and unique story caught our attention and we reached out to offer our support for the workshop. After the amazing response we’ve received from parents who attended the workshop in the hospital, our team decided to feature this as a user story on our blog in the hopes of inspiring fellow Piktochart users and our blog readers.
We continued to support the workshop and after a great turnout and positive feedback, the team at Holland Bloorview suggested the possibility of partnering together with our team to develop an infographic template for children, youth and their families to share their information.
The benefits of using an infographic for sharing are plenty:
- Visual information can be understood quickly and consistently
- Families and self-advocates can control the information being shared
- Most of all, families don’t lose their voices in telling their story
With our shared mission of empowering people to create meaningful connections through visual stories, this partnership made a lot of sense for us!
Our New Infographic Template For Families
Let’s dive into more in-depth information about these infographic templates crafted by our amazing designers, Maxi and Natasya, coupled with tips and a guide on using the templates by the team at Holland Bloorview.
These templates can be used as a tool to empower children, youth and families to share their stories. Families can use visual stories to share what their needs are and advocate for the treatment they need and deserve. These stories can be shared with family members, friends, teachers, doctors, community programs and others.
Check out the two templates that have been created!
All About Me
The first “All About Me” template is designed in a two A4 paper sheet format to make it easy to print. It’s also separated in two sections. Maxi, who designed this print-friendly template, also included a variety of color schemes to choose from.
Helpful tip: Use the star symbols for ideas on how to fill out the template. These ideas can be removed after you fill out the template.
Try this template out in Piktochart now!
All About Me 2
The second All About Me was template was designed by Natasya. She explained that the reasoning behind the template’s bright colors is to brighten a child’s day.
“A child or youth’s mind is full of imagination and sometimes they might need help translating it into words. Icons can help represent what they have in mind,” she said.
Each color scheme option for this template is also created and named with a profession in mind to help children better relate to the overall design.
Create this template in Piktochart now!
We’re aware that children are attracted to diverse colors, so we’ve also taken an extra step to design both templates with a variety of color schemes to spice up your infographic! Explore the different colors with just a few clicks and find one that is suitable for your child.
And voila! A fully customizable infographic. Here are some helpful tips for making your infographic:
- Piktochart has many images and icons. Choose images and icons that match your child
- Make sure your font is size 11 or bigger so that the text is easy to read
- Use contrasting colors (light and dark) so information stands out
- If you’re printing the infographic, there’s a white and black color scheme option to print in either monochrome or grayscale
- If your child can choose their favorite color, or the kind of content they want on the infographic, it also helps them develop their own self-advocacy skills
Share Your Story
We’d love to hear what you think of these new templates! Besides being for families, they can also be used in different ways such as for a new employee introduction, an ice breaker for new friends, and any situation that can help you learn more about others.
Special thanks to the entire team at Holland Bloorview for guiding us along in the process of this template creation.
Happy Piktochart-ing!
