Meet Peter van Dernoot of The Children’s Treehouse Foundation in Denver

Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter van Dernoot.

Peter, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
It was a gut-wrenching day. The day we had to tell our two kids that Mom had a rare type of lung cancer. It is forever etched in my mind. Our son, Craig, age 12, sat silently as tears filled his eyes. Our daughter, Laura, age 10, leaped from the booth in the quiet restaurant and screamed, “NOOO!” at the top of her lungs, a sound so heartbreaking I can still hear it today, more than 40 years later. And we didn’t even know she had heard anything about cancer.

My wife, Alice, the picture of health, was a non-smoker who never ate junk food, ran five miles every day. She had developed a form of lung cancer so rare that only a dozen others had ever faced it. When the doctor, who I’d never heard of before, called me and told me of the findings, I yelled at him: “You’re crazier than hell; you’re looking at the wrong lab tests!” The kids were devastated. The pain of that experience never really goes away. I wish my kid’s path through life had been different, but you had to deal with what you get.

As she passed, my focus was on raising my children and continuing the career I have as a public relations executive. But in 2001, some 20 years after her death, a chance business assignment led me to create a foundation for children whose parents are battling cancer. At that time, one of my clients was a prominent healthcare company. The company executive asked me to investigate a program at one of their nearby hospitals that had recently started an emotional support program for children whose parents have cancer. There, I saw the children’s drawings and poems about their ordeal, as well as glowing reports from the parents.

I was awestruck! I still get choked up thinking about it. I could see immediately how the program helped the children cope with their fear, anxiety and confusion. Moreover, the parents didn’t know how to talk to their children about their cancer so the various activities helped to demystify the anguish of the cancer experience. I knew immediately: this was exactly the kind of program my kids would have benefitted from, 20 years earlier.

I thought the artwork and testimonials from the program would make a great book for other families going through the same thing. And to my joy, the families allowed me to tell their story. The book, Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer, was initially rejected by 110 publishers, who were uncomfortable with the subject matter, but finally, it got published— and it is still in circulation.

The next step, I thought, was to raise a lot of money and persuade cancer centers to launch a similar program. But when I presented the idea to professionals at a cancer center, three professionals all shook their heads. What I had to do, they said, was to create such a support program and then convince the centers to install it. And they knew how I could start! They immediately introduced me to Sue Heiney, a professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina, who was a leading authority on the impact of cancer on families.

To my great joy when I described what I wanted to do, she immediately agreed to help create such a program curriculum. Over two years, we created a unique program, with our first training workshop for cancer center professionals, held in December 2002.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
While billions of dollars are being made available to try to terminate cancer, relatively few dollars are donated to help families, and especially the children, to cope when cancer strikes. And even as we are constantly seeking funding for our training programs, many cancer centers are reluctant to launch an emotional support program for their parent patient’s children. Why? It requires special staffing by highly qualified professionals—social workers, child-life specialists, nurses and others — which we train —in a cost area, not a profit area. And even when such a department starts, the trained personnel often move on to other functions in just a few years. And that’s the demise of the support program.

We’d love to hear more about your organization.
The CLIMB® (Children’s Lives Include Moments of Bravery) program is based on principles of mental health promotion, not psychotherapy. Intended for children ages 6-11, the aim is to build upon the child’s strengths and increase his/her ability to cope with the stress associated with the parent’s illness. In the course of one night per week for six weeks, the children have cancer demystified, lose a sense of isolation, learn to communicate their feelings with others, and learn how to cope with feelings such as sadness, anger and confusion. The companion Parent Program helps parents take full advantage of the skills and activities their children are learning in CLIMB® and gives them tools to keep communication with their children open.

Now, The Children’s Treehouse Foundation, www.childrenstreehousefdn.org, offers 57 CLIMB programs in the US in 26 states, and 21 programs in five foreign countries. (As I write this document, I’m delighted that England is sending one of their leading professionals to attend our two-day training workshop this October here in Denver, for professionals to consider how they can adapt our program at their 20+ cancer centers throughout England and elsewhere.) Thousands of children have completed the program, which is run by social workers and medicals professionals at leading cancer centers. Along the way, we’ve had financial support from corporate giants, including Avon cosmetics, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Novartis.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Every year in the U.S., 1.7 million adults are diagnosed with cancer. That’s horrible enough. But each year their 750,000 kids under the age of 18 who are going to hear, “I’m sorry to tell you. Your mom or dad has cancer.” I know how devastating that is. Their lives may never be the same. Without professional support, many will have psychological problems, some throughout their lives. We are the only organization in the U.S. that has a professional, manualized program addressing this severe concern. We’ve had a mom with breast cancer tell us that she could handle the chemo and the hair loss, but the hardest part was telling her daughters about having cancer. We tell families how to do that. It’s so gratifying.

You tell a six-year-old child, that mom has cancer, and very often the first comment from them is: “Is it my fault because I was bad?” Though our six-week program, we demystify the fears of cancer— and the kids learn they didn’t cause it; they can’t catch it, and they can help.

Why Denver?
Denver is a wonderful place to live and work. I grew up in New England, college at UConn, but after married for four years, I persuaded my wife to allow us to move to Colorado (and Denver) where the skiing was known to be much better than upstate NE. And so, we moved here in 1963, just one year after Vail opened—- which company has become one of the leading skiing organizations in the world.

Great climate— 300 days of sunshine. Low humidity. Great theatre, arts, sports and restaurants— and a large healthcare core.

Contact Info:

• Address: 111 So. Monroe St. B302 Denver, CO 80209
• Website: www.childrenstreehousefdn.org
• Phone: 303-399-1156
• Email: prvand@aol.com

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