A Long Island non-profit wants to raise money to provide children’s hospitals with wireless video game consoles. They hope to ease the trauma of prolonged hospital stays.
Operation Playcation is sponsored by the Spencer Foundation and they hope to raise enough money to provide wireless Playstation consoles to Stony Brook Children’s Hospital.
Many of the patients who are treated for cancer live in isolation due to weakened immune systems. Joan Alpers, department director of Child Life Services at Stony Brook, says it's important to provide children with the emotional medicine they need while they are in the hospital.
“Play is an essential and natural part of the developmental needs of childhood and play also is what we use to help facilitate healing, coping, mastery, self-expression, all of the things kids need to feel good about themselves.”
Alpers says the risk of infection is lower with wireless consoles because there is less equipment to clean.
The Spencer Foundation held a fundraiser over the weekend to raise the necessary funds.