Spiritual care and education

When a child or teen is hospitalized, it creates many challenges for them and their community.

Chaplains are available to meet with patients and their loved ones to provide support that meets their individual spiritual and emotional needs.

For some, this might mean making use of one’s faith, prayer, scripture or sacraments. It might also mean engaging in conversation on one’s struggle to feel the presence of God at a time when God can seem distant. Regardless of whether someone has or does not have a faith affiliation, chaplains can provide a safe space to engage in meaning making and to process one’s connection to self, others, nature or the world.

The Spiritual Care and Education team at Children's Health℠ can meet religious and spiritual needs for prayer or ritual, provide copies of scriptures from various religious traditions, offer blessings at significant moments, provide one-on-one support, engage in spiritual play with age-appropriate activities or arrange visits from a religious leader of one’s specific faith tradition.

At Children's Health, our team is committed to providing spiritual support for patients and families of any religion, faith tradition or connection to something greater than themselves. We offer one-on-one counseling, traditional rites, prayers and spiritual play with age-appropriate stories and activities.

Center for spirituality of children

When a child is hospitalized, that child’s world is changed forever. We are honored to provide a hopeful, spiritual presence for children and their families at one of the most vulnerable times in their lives.

Chapel and worship services

For those seeking comforting inspiration, the Haggerty Chapel at Children’s Medical Center Dallas and the Abbott Chapel at Children’s Medical Center Plano are available 24 hours a day.

Bereavement care program

The purpose of bereavement care is to support patients, families and staff members in their process of grief and at all stages of dying: before, during and after death.

Clinical pastoral education and volunteer program

Clinical pastoral education

Children’s Health applies its role as a leading teaching hospital in North Texas to its Spiritual Care and Education Department as well.

Volunteer ministry program

Our volunteer ministry program began in 1999 from a need to reach out to the growing number of patients and families being treated in the Emergency Department (ED) and First Care clinic.