HEART TOUCH PROJECT

the power of touch

aka THE HEART TOUCH PROJECT   |   Santa Monica, CA   |  www.hearttouch.org

Mission

The Heart Touch Project is a non profit educational organization dedicated to the training and delivery of compassionate and healing touch to homebound or hospitalized, men, women and children.

Ruling year info

1995

Founder

Ms. Shawnee Isaac-Smith

Main address

3400 Airport Ave, Ste 42

Santa Monica, CA 90405 USA

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EIN

95-4529022

NTEE code info

Community Health Systems (E21)

Children's and Youth Services (P30)

Health Support Services (E60)

IRS filing requirement

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

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Communication

Programs and results

What we aim to solve

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Our programs

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?

Heart Touch Hospice Program

Considered the model of quality end-of-life care, hospice care involves a team-oriented approach that focuses on comfort and compassion, not curing. Towards this end, the Hospice Team develops a care plan that meets each patient’s individual needs for pain management and symptom control. Heart Touch’s professionally trained volunteers, working in coordination with the Hospice Team, provide much-needed comfort and compassionate touch to the hospice patient through therapeutic massage. The core of the program is a twenty-hour training that introduces the practice of mindful, compassionate massage. Graduates are assigned to one of our twelve partner hospice organizations where they volunteer to deliver free massage once a week to their assigned patients.

Population(s) Served

The Children's Program trains and manages bodywork professionals to provide compassionate, caring touch to medically fragile children, ages birth to late teens. A sixteen-hour training deals with the physical, psychological, social and emotional issues facing seriously or terminally ill children. An additional workshop, geared to train parents to massage their infants, is required for volunteers to work with medically fragile newborns. 
The Heart Touch Children’s Program is currently in place at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Mattel Children's Hospitalat UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Heart Touch volunteers provide compassionate touch to infants in  Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU), children in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU), Pediatric Units, a Rehabilitation Department and an outpatient Pain and Palliative Care Clinic. Providing therapeutic massage in these settings is a way for children to gain the benefits of massage and have a positive touch experience during their hospital stay.  Heart Touch assigns volunteers to TrinityKids Care, a program devoted exclusively to children in hospice.

Heart Touch also provides education to the physicians,nurses and other medical staff in each of the hospital departments where they provide care.

Population(s) Served

The Heart Touch International Global Outreach Program recruits bodywork professionals who spend two weeks in Southeast Asia or India to provide compassionate touch and massage to orphans, to patients in hospitals and to those impacted by HIV/AIDS. Participants in this program raise money or pay for all the expenses associated with this program.

Population(s) Served

Where we work

Goals & Strategy

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.

Charting impact

Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

The Heart Touch Project's goals are to:
- Provide compassionate and healing touch to homebound or hospitalized men, women, and children;
- Train bodywork professionals to provide therapeutic touch therapy to vulnerable populations in Southern California; and
- Educate healthcare practitioners in the Heart Touch approach.

In his landmark publication Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, Ashley Montagu characterized touch as “above all, an act of communication." He further says that the “use of touch and physical closeness may be the most important way to communicate to acutely ill persons that they are important as human beings." It is in this spirit that Heart Touch staff created a variety of trainings to assist volunteers develop the awareness and skills needed to communicate that importance. For these reasons, the trainings put great emphasis on the dignity and worth of those struggling with serious illnesses and medical conditions.

Heart Touch teaches a gentle, nurturing and mindful form of touch therapy based on a profound respect for the physical and psychological needs of the individual. Strictly speaking, the Heart Touch approach is neither a technique nor a modality, but a specialized form of skilled touch, based on a holistic approach to therapeutic massage.

Over the years, Heart Touch has trained more than 3,500 bodywork professionals, who have given more than 23,000 free massages to 1,000 of the most vulnerable members of our community.

In the years ahead, The Heart Touch Project strives to expand the programs to a wider network of hospitals and hospices in the greater Los Angeles and train more bodywork professionals in the Heart Touch method.

Financials

HEART TOUCH PROJECT
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Operations

The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.

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Connect with nonprofit leaders

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HEART TOUCH PROJECT

Board of directors
as of 04/29/2019
SOURCE: Self-reported by organization
Board chair

Juliana Bancroft

Shawnee Isaac Smith

Santa Monica Healing Arts Inc

Juliana Bancroft

Paisley Lane Inc

Rene Russo

CAA

Jacob Dubois

Reynolds Advisory Partners

Rodney Fayton

International Documentary Association

Keri Frankenstein

Bonni Koerner

American Express

Andrew Lanoie

William Morris Agency

Lisa Perry

Kurt Tamaru

Clinical Effectiveness and Innovative Care Delivery Optum Local Care Delivery