Mission Statement
National Project DOCC
Project DOCC's mission is to provide pediatric physicians-in-training with a comprehensive understanding of life with a child with chronic illness or disability. Project DOCC trains families to be teachers, thereby widening a physician's perspective from hospital/office to the home/community. A second no less important goal, is to illustrate the need for "chronic care" planning accomplished by an alliance between physicians and parents to improve the quality of life and educational opportunities for these children. A third goal is to empower parents/care givers of children with special needs to become skillful family and community advocates and to affect both the health care system and it's health care professionals.
Philosophy National Project DOCC
Project DOCC focuses on the impact of chronic illness/disability on families. Our belief is that special health care needs create universal issues. Our core philosophy relies on our similarities, not our differences. Therefore, we teach about family and community dynamics, not an individual child's disease and disability. Project DOCC's global perspectives allows parent teachers to speak with one voice.
Note:
Parents are Project DOCC. From our experience, we have seen that many people assume the role of parent. In all of our materials, we use the term "parent" to include: mother, father, grandparent, foster parent, guardian.
Additionally, in all our materials, Project DOCC uses the term "chronic illness" to represent: chronic illness, chronic disability, chronic condition, medical fragility, technology dependence, etc. This speaks to our philosophy that any family whose child has fallen under one of these categories has been impacted by similar issues. An example is, children with chronic disabilities all have medial, educational, social and financial issues.