It is important to provide every child with opportunities to be a kid, especially while dealing with what is often stressful events during a hospitalization. The Cherese Mari Laulhere Child Life Program at MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach ensures children receive medical play, music therapy and always remembers a child’s work is play. However, they couldn’t provide this necessary coping support as frequently, without the assistance of community partners, like Turner Construction Company.
Turner’s mission is to provide quality construction services, while also making a difference for their clients, employees, and especially their community. To date, Turner has partnered with Miller Children’s & Women’s to help expand patient and family access to services through various construction projects including building its inpatient pavilion, along with construction of its new, state-of-the-art outpatient center, the Cherese Mari Laulhere Children’s Village. The company also constructed the 2nd floor Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the 3rd floor Hematology/Oncology Center, and performed seismic upgrades within the existing Long Beach Medical Center.
But Turner’s partnership and commitment to the community doesn’t stop with bricks and mortar. In addition to financial contributions benefiting the MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Foundation, Turner often sponsors and volunteers at events where they can directly engage with patients. The local construction team donated dolphin wagons for the children to ride in when they are taken to different parts of the hospital and even donated funds and food to hospital employees at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital during COVID.
The holiday season is one of the most important times to lift patients’ spirits. Knowing this, every holiday season Turner is the title sponsor of Santa’s Workshop – which gets kids out of their hospital beds and taken to a transformed conference room where they can meet Santa, choose gifts for themselves and choose presents to wrap for their family members.
“Turner Construction has supported the Child Life Program for over 20 years, and it really has made a difference in not only the lives of our patients, but also our staff” says Rita Goshert, director, Child Life Program, MemorialCare Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach. “It’s important to give children a sense of normalcy while hospitalized and this event does that at an important time of the year, and it encourages our employees during the holiday season to see their patients and families joyfully playing and having a good time. They are more than just a major sponsor for our hospital, they’re a part of our community.”
