Amaeyzing Partner Awards

Pediatric oncology social worker Heather Jolly began partnering with Kids & Art in 2022 through our Gift of ArtKits program at Kaiser Permanente Oakland. Since then, we have worked closely with Heather to ensure that we develop programs that meet the needs of her patients. In her second role as a palliative care social worker, Heather brought our custom hospice and bereavement workshop events to the families of critically ill children in the Bay Area. Heather has been an enormous support to Kids & Art as we work to find new ways to help pediatric patients, and she truly deserves this year’s Amaeyzing Partner Award.

Kids & Art was born out of shared creative exchanges in the waiting room at the Bass Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. Since then, we have worked very closely with the child life team and nursing staff to develop programs that meet the needs of their patients, whenever and wherever they are. All of our programs were piloted at the Bass Center. During the first 12 years, we expanded from monthly outpatient workshops to weekly inpatient workshops. Pivoting during Covid, our outpatient workshops became monthly Amaeyzing ArtKit deliveries and now, once again, we were invited back to host a weekly Artist-in-Residence program. The staff at the Bass Center have supported us every step of the way.