Good morning. Thank you very for the opportunity to be here today and to participate in this important discussion. We are passionate advocates of families with sick children, and so appreciate the commitment and the quality of the work and discussion that's happening on behalf of families.
What we want to share with you today is really twofold. We want to take a few minutes to talk with you a little bit about Ronald McDonald Houses and the role they play in supporting families of sick children, and from there share with you some of the highlights of a Canadian literature research study we did this past year to help us understand the needs of families and what was driving the growth we were experiencing at the houses. I think it will provide some important insights into the very real needs and difficulties of families when they're dealing with a sick child, in particular a sick child who has to be treated at a hospital away from their home or local community.
Let me begin with Ronald McDonald Houses. Our first house opened in Canada, in Toronto, in 1981. Today, we have 14 Ronald McDonald Houses right across the country. Every children's hospital has a Ronald McDonald House within either easy walking distance, a few steps, or right on hospital property. We have experienced tremendous growth in our program and in the service we provide to Canadian families who have to travel to enable their sick child to be treated for a life-threatening illness or injury.
In many ways our houses really began from the intuition that it was simply the right thing to do. We understood that what a sick child needs, whether it's a banged knee or something far more serious, is their family and their parents nearby. Our houses started out as very warm bed and breakfasts, anywhere from 10 to 12 bedrooms. The extraordinary growth that's gone on is that our new Toronto house, which is our third house in Toronto, now has 96 bedrooms. It is the largest Ronald McDonald House in the world.
The 14 houses in Canada are part of a network of 318 Ronald McDonald Houses worldwide. All of our houses across the country have really gone through extraordinary growth in the last five to ten years. We have 476 bedrooms for families across the country. Some of our houses have turn-away rates as high as 70%. Today, we're serving just under 10,000 families a year who stay with us, which represents one-third of the families of Canada's most seriously sick and injured children.
By 2014 we'll have more than doubled that number, to close to 20,000 families a year, so it's really quite remarkable what a Ronald McDonald House provides. They are truly healing oases. They're spaces where a family can step inside. They can sleep. They can eat. They can connect with other families who are going through similar difficult life circumstances. They can do their laundry. They can be with the other siblings. They can really continue to be a family and have maybe a little bit of normal at a time when everything in their lives is anything but normal.
When we talk about what a house is, I always feel that nothing says it more powerfully than the families themselves. What we hear repeatedly is how one minute you're running around to school, carpools, jobs, and living the fullness of all of our lives, and in a nanosecond your life changes. You're fighting for the life of your child. You have to leave your community. You may have to quit your job. You have siblings and other children to care for. You're now on a healing journey that can take months, sometimes years, and ultimately create a new normal for your family. It is an extraordinarily devastating and difficult time for families.
What a Ronald McDonald House does is provide that moment of pause and support and allow the families to focus on the only thing that matters, which is healing their sick child and being a family themselves.
If I may, I'd like to read to you a letter we received from a family. I think it is particularly powerful in expressing not only the kind of support a family needs when they're dealing with a sick child, but also the role that a Ronald McDonald House provides in helping support that.
This letter came from Drew Graham. He is the father of Oliver and Jax, husband of Kaitlin, and this came from our Halifax house:
On June 5, 11:18 p.m., my youngest son, Oliver, beat his cancer. Unfortunately, his cancer was so aggressive that he had to sacrifice his life to do it. He was the bravest person I will ever know. Oliver's two-year fight taught me I had my priorities wrong. Even before the cancer, I was missing my youngest son's life. Ronald McDonald House would later teach me I was also missing my oldest. When your child is going through aggressive chemo, you treat them like a porcelain doll, terrified of every cough or cold, always waiting for them to vomit or bleed. You are literally waiting for the worst to happen. My oldest, Jax, only 15 months older than Oliver, would spend each day at the hospital playing what Oliver wanted to play, and playing how we told him he was allowed to play. Jax was not allowed to play something his brother could not, and Oliver, most of the time, could not play much. For Jax, that all changed as soon as we left for Ronald McDonald House. Around 6:30, Ollie's bedtime, Jax and I would walk from the IWK hospital to Ronald McDonald House. As soon as we exited the hospital, it would be about Jax. We would race from fire hydrant to fire hydrant, finally sprinting to the big red door. Once we were inside, Jax would take off to the playroom, where kids and volunteers would play with him. Here he wasn't running too fast or playing too rough; he was just a kid being a kid. If he got hungry, there was always a treat or food to be found in the kitchen. After playtime, it was off to the tub and bed. In bed we'd watch Scooby-Doo, Spiderman, or Ben 10. Jax would tell me about the characters in the show and what new toys he thought were cool. Lying together, lying on separate single beds or together on a double, I bonded with my son, I mean really bonded with my son. Some nights when Jax was asleep, I would sneak out to the common room to watch hockey or the news, anything to take my mind off cancer. I'd meet other parents and inevitably talk about why we were there. In these conversations, I learned life is not fair and cancer wasn't the only thing kids were fighting. I would also learn that while I thought we were broke and had it tough, every family at the house had it tough. Some had other kids who had to stay home, eight- to 10-hour drives, jobs that only allowed unpaid leave or forcing them to stay at work or quit. I hope you are never faced with the choice of leaving your dying child or losing the ability to support your family. If not for Ronald McDonald House, these families, my family, would not have been together when they most needed to be. Ronald McDonald House became for me and Jax an oasis, a place to play where Jax didn't have to curb his enthusiasm and I was just a regular parent. The house allowed both of us to let off steam and make the most of what days we still had as a whole family. To all the staff and volunteers who make a habit of going above and beyond, thank you for turning Ronald McDonald House into a home. Thank you for spoiling Jax, for being an ear when I needed to speak, a shrink when I needed advice, a shoulder when I needed to cry, and a friend when I needed a hug. You are family. On behalf of all my family, in the words of Oliver, “My love you, all my heart.”
I share that story because I think it very powerfully and honestly reflects just the enormity of the life challenges that families face when they are healing a sick child, and how the practicalities of life can be so hard to deal with when the only thing that matters is that child who's in front of you.
As we've looked at Ronald McDonald Houses and really grown into recognizing the role we've come to play in supporting the families of sick children, we have been faced with, and are continually faced with, extraordinary growth. We never anticipated that we'd be in a space where we'd be serving 10,000 families a year, growing to 20,000, and have 14 houses, and the growth isn't ending.
One of the processes we went through last year was a Canadian literature review, through a social research agency called Impakt, to help us understand the context of families.
There were seven key findings that were brought forward to us. I'd like to share them with this committee, because I think they really speak so powerfully to the core issue that families face when they have a sick child, both on the catastrophic financial side and the emotional burdens.
Very quickly, the key findings were these.
First, today more families than ever have to travel significant distances to obtain care for their seriously ill child. As everyone here knows, there's been an increasing shift towards specialty centres and hospitals of excellence in particular fields. It's no longer the case that families are just being treated at their local hospitals. Getting the treatment that your child requires most often requires travel to the hospital that can provide that level of expertise. As well, 76% of Canadians live outside of a community with a children's hospital, so travel is now not a nice-to-do to get better care, but a must-do to get the core care that families need. However, when you have to travel and when you are displaced, it has a significant impact on your life and that of your entire family.
The second key point of what's driving our growth is that it's a good-news story. The healing and recovery rates of children have increased significantly. Over the last 30 years, if you look at cancer, for example, you see that children have gone from a 30% recovery rate to an 80% recovery rate today, which is amazing. Children are getting better.
The reality is, though, thanks to medical advances and thanks to children healing, more treatments are required over longer periods of time, so the average stay at our houses, which used to be four to five days, is now 55-plus days. More than 50% of our families are there for extended or multiple stays. When you combine the financial burdens with the emotional burdens and the necessity of travel, you recognize that anything we can put in place that will support families—