Corporate Social Responsibility

• Coaching Service: the Hospital has a service to help its professionals to meet their full potential and improve their leadership skills. The service also helps people with work-related problems and those who do high-stress, emotional work.
• Training Plan: each year, professional development pathways are offered – areas for improvement in aspects related to users and working areas regarding values.
• Incentive Policy: professional career and management contracts are two tools available to professionals to incentivise the setting and obtaining of objectives.
• Recognition Policy: each year, we set aside a day to celebrate the work of professionals who have retired, where they are recognised publicly, as well as the loyalty of those who have worked 25 years at the hospital.
• Ability to Innovate: for professionals who have innovative thoughts or the ability to generate ideas, there is a support service that helps them to put their ideas and projects into practice.
• Social Support Service: People and Values Department advises professionals who have a social need in their family (disability, elderly, dependence, etc.)
• Employees' Benefits: professionals enjoy benefits by having access to certain goods and services, whether provided by the Hospital (significant discounts on orthodontic services for the children of workers, etc.) or by partner companies.
• Welcome for New Employees: new employees are welcomed with information about the Hospital and the Order.
• Charity Programmes: there are various programmes organised by the Hospital or the Order that allow employees to show their charitable side.
• Areas of Participation: periodically, employees can participate in the “life” of the Hospital, outside of the professional setting. The centre organises costume contests, nativity scenes at Christmas and other events.
• Social Events Committee: the Hospital has several initiatives outside work, such as a theatre group, a choir, an indoor football team, a running team, a yoga group, etc. The “Activa’t” initiative leads the way in developing these proposals.

With patients and their families in mind, the Centre has various active initiatives:

• “Space for Associations”: its goal is to provide an indirect service to patients through its associations. The Space offers three equipped offices for the associations to use and a professional dedicated to them full-time.
• Child Life Specialist: a professional trained to help children, adolescents and their families, to understand and handle emotionally stressful health-related life events and experiences.
• Volunteers: more than 600 people to accompany and play with the patient during their hospital stay so that the family can rest, to organise birthday parties, holidays, Christmas, to look after the patient's siblings – ultimately, to make being in the Hospital easier.
• Hospital clowns: professional performers with special healthcare-related training, who focus on laughter therapy and relaxation. They work closely with healthcare teams to alleviate the states of emotional stress and anxiety brought on by therapeutic processes.
• Hospital School "La Magnòlia" and Mental Health Classroom: they help children to maintain a link with their daily lives, while ensuring that their school rhythm is not broken.
• Music Therapy: sessions for patients admitted to the Oncology, Traumatology, General Paediatrics, ICU, Psychiatry and Neonatology wards.

Internationally, SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital has two programmes managed from the centre itself:

• PCCB Charity Fund: thanks to the solidarity of the founding donors of the SJD Pediatric Cancer Center Barcelona and other donors who are individuals and companies, this international cooperation program allows us to treat children without resources who suffer from cancer and live in countries where it is impossible to access the treatment they need.
• “Cuida'm” Programme: with this programme, and thanks to individuals and corporate partners, we enable sick children who have no chance of treatment in their own country to be treated at our Hospital and then return home cured or in improved health.
• Twinning with Sierra Leone: SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital is twinned with the Order's centre in Sierra Leone: Saint John of God Hospital. Our paediatricians, nurses and other professionals regularly travel to Sierra Leone to exchange knowledge and support the professionals working there. From Barcelona we also try to improve the facilities there and provide them with materials. In addition, we have founded a nursing school for training and to create local job opportunities.

Linked to the twinning with Sierra Leone, our centre has another charity initiative. Healthcare is not public in Sierra Leone, and people with limited resources put off going to hospital when sick. To prevent these situations, we have promoted a programme in which you can sponsor a child's treatment in Sierra Leone. This programme has one goal: to raise funds to treat these families free of charge.

As a leading centre for the care of mothers, children and adolescents, SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital promotes several initiatives that have two key objectives:

1. To minimise future health problems through prevention and promotion of healthy habits in families.
2. To support families with chronically ill patients, with tools to better manage the disease and improve the quality of life of children.

Prevention and promotion

SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital is responsible for promoting healthy habits in childhood, because many adult diseases can be avoided through prevention during childhood. We therefore feel that we have a duty to share this knowledge with society.
In recent years, the Hospital has been driving initiatives through new technologies and social networks, as they are able to reach a wider audience geographically.

The main vehicle we use is the FAROS website, which provides parents and teachers with confirmed and updated quality information with which to convey healthy habits to children. This is done through its website and through a series of case reports on topics of interest related to child and adolescent health, i.e. the FAROS reports.

Other initiatives in this line are:

• Talks for parents: given periodically and in-person, these are taught by the Hospital's professionals on a specific topic in health education. These are meant for parents, guardians, child carers, nurseries and school teachers.
• First aid workshops: monthly, the Hospital gives first aid workshops for parents, carers and teachers who want to learn how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on babies and young children, and general first aid.
• School activities: from time to time, the Hospital conducts activities with local school children that are aimed at conveying healthy habits, scientific culture and innovation.
• Partnerships and collaborations: the Hospital works with companies and institutions as consultants in the process of developing products and services, in order to ensure their suitability for mothers, children and adolescents.

Support for families

With web resources, the Hospital provides information and resources for families living with a chronically ill patient who need support beyond that received at the doctor's office. Through advice and resources, the Hospital provides parents and carers with reliable information to better manage the disease at home, which lets them feel more confident in managing the disease and helps to improve the child's quality of life.

With the online Guía Metabólica and Guía Diabetes tipo 1, SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital helps families living with a child who has a congenital metabolic disorder or diabetes, whether he or she is a patient of the hospital or not.

Likewise, by means of the Share4Rare website, the Hospital promotes biomedical research into rare diseases. By bringing together families and doctors in a community-based virtual environment, knowledge is shared and research advanced on these diseases.

• Resource optimisation: the Centre continuously promotes energy-saving policies and reduced water consumption at its facilities.
• Improved waste management: the Hospital has several systems to handle and manage the different kinds of waste that is generated, prioritising the rule of the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
• Certifications: thanks to its various initiatives and as a sign of our commitment, the Hospital has accreditations, such as the Catalan Network of Smoke-Free Hospitals, ISO 14001, EMAS environmental management and AMED, as an establishment promoting the Mediterranean diet.