Creative Care, a program offered through Creative Clay, is a multidisciplinary arts in wellness program serving patients, families and caregivers in healthcare communities in the greater St. Petersburg region of Florida. Creative Care’s expressive arts programming addresses the whole person in the healthcare/institutional setting and forwards Creative Clay’s vision of making the arts accessible to all.
Creative Care currently provides outreach programming at Sabal Palms Health and Rehabilitation Center in Largo. Interested in having an artist visit you or your facility? Contact Kim Dohrman at Creative Clay. 727-825-0515. Or email admin@creativeclay.org.
History of Creative Care 2008-2023
In 2008, Creative Care began a pilot project with a grant from the Allegany Franciscan Ministries to offer the arts to patients, families and clinicians at St. Anthony’s Hospital, All Children’s Hospital, Benedict Haven, and Ronald McDonald House. Through a formal evaluation process, benefits emerged that are consistent with arts in healthcare research including enhancing patient and staff satisfaction and promoting whole person healthcare. Additionally, the results demonstrated that artists in residence had become highly valued members of the interdisciplinary team and program participants experienced pain reduction, enhanced mental and spiritual health, and improved clinical outcomes including physiological responses to creative sessions.
In October 2013, The St. Pete Glitter Queens presented a check for $28,550 for Creative Care’s children’s programs. The Glitter Queens raised enough money at their annual Royal Ball to send Creative Care back into All Children’s Hospital.
In March 2013, Creative Care was contracted by St. Anthony’s Hospital to provide arts in healthcare to their patients and staff. Creative Care artists-in-residence provide arts experiences in the following units: Behavioral Health, Skilled Nursing, Orthopedics and Oncology. This program ended in September 2015 when St. Anthony's began its own internal arts in healthcare program.
In January 2012, 2014 and 2015 Creative Care was awarded funding through the National Endowment for the Arts for the Arts for All Kids program at All Children’s Hospital. Professional visual, dance, music, and literary artists are a valuable presence in the hospital and provide individual and group art experiences to pediatric patients, their families and hospital staff.
Children have unique emotional and developmental needs that can be supported by weaving creative expression into the healing environment. Artistic expression is a developmentally appropriate means of communication for children as it allows them to express thoughts and experiences in a non-threatening way.
Art making provides distraction, relaxation and a focus on something pleasant. It also allows for expression of feelings and the telling of personal stories. The arts foster an identity that is more than one’s diagnosis, and art products help medical staff to increase their understanding of what is important to the patient, which can aid in treatment planning and implementation. For participants with disabilities or special needs that impact mobility and/or developmental capacities, access to the arts can be a normalizing experience by promoting socialization, self-awareness and confidence. Quantitative and qualitative research has documented the arts lead to better patient outcomes, shorter lengths of stay, reduced healthcare costs, and greater patient and family satisfaction. (State of the field report: Arts in healthcare 2009. Washington, DC: Society for the Arts and Healthcare).
Creative Care also held Art Therapy Workshops for women veterans with PTSD at Creative Clay from 2021-2023. It was led by professional Art Therapist Cara Bussa Weaver and Dr. Marcy Miller. Funding for the program was provided by the Community Foundation Tampa Bay. This program operated from 2021-2023.