A volunteer team from Consigli Construction’s Westchester office helped create a personalized bedroom for Allison, a Brewster child being treated for cancer at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. The project was part of Circle of Care’s Art From the Heart program, according to Yonkers Times. Its report describes a lofted bed and a desk area among the room’s features; when the space was unveiled, Allison explored it and climbed onto the bed.
A personalized project, with defined limits
Circle of Care says Art From the Heart teams work with a child and family to develop a room “dream” using paint, decor and imagination—not structural remodeling. The program is for patients age four and older who live in Connecticut or Westchester County, New York, according to the organization’s program description. Allison’s family had asked for a comfortable, safe place where she could play and relax, Yonkers Times reported. The account does not describe a clinical purpose for the makeover or establish an effect on her treatment.
The program operates alongside, but separately from, hospital services. Westchester Medical Center Health Network says Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital offers child life and creative arts therapy as part of its pediatric services. Its pediatric hematology and oncology team diagnoses and treats children and teens with cancers including leukemia, lymphoma and brain tumors, the network says.
The wider pediatric cancer context
The New York State Department of Health reports that almost 950 children and adolescents in the state are diagnosed with cancer each year and almost 100 die from the disease. Those statewide figures describe the broader need for pediatric cancer care; they do not indicate Allison’s diagnosis or prognosis.
A separate example illustrates how another nonprofit has used a home-space makeover to support a child during cancer treatment. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on Jan. 1, 2024, that Special Spaces Chattanooga volunteers completed an eight-hour bedroom makeover for Ellie, a six-year-old in Middle Valley, Tennessee, being treated for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. That project involved a different organization, child and state; it is an example, not evidence that such makeovers are becoming more frequent.
For Allison, the reported result was a room arranged around her interests and a place to play. The account offers a glimpse of one family’s experience, rather than evidence of a broader medical or treatment outcome.
