Send in the clowns!
March 1, 1999
Send in the clowns!
Recruit volunteers for clowning program
A 15-minute visit from a clown provides a great deal of comfort to hospice patients. At least that’s been the experience of the Hospice of Ashtabula County in Ashtabula, OH.
The hospice has 14 clown volunteers, about 15% of its volunteer base. Usually, clown volunteers travel in pairs to make brief, but entertaining visits to patients who have requested the service. They dress in full make-up and costume and play musical instruments, sing, juggle, twist balloons into animals, or perform skits.
"It’s interesting to me to see the metamorphosis that takes place in some patients," says Susan Druschel, MA, coordinator of volunteers, pastoral care, and bereavement for the hospital-based hospice, which serves the northeastern tip of Ohio.
Compassionate clowning
For example, one older man eagerly awaits the clowns’ visits, Druschel says. The man’s family wrote to the hospice:
"The hospice clowns have visited several times now. Dad is always excited when we tell him they’re coming. For a short time I think he is able to forget how sick he is. They make him laugh and feel special, and that makes us all feel good."
The hospice’s social worker came up with the idea of starting a compassionate clowning program after she and a colleague attended a seminar on clowning about five years ago.
"When we came back, we were saying what fun it had been. Instead of telling everyone, we thought we would show them with a skit," says Aimee Cool, LSW, certified bereavement facilitator and hospice social worker.
Intensive humor training
The pair dressed in costume and performed a skit for everyone at the hospice. Then they walked through the hospital, continuing to perform for patients.
"It was such a positive experience to see how useful humor could be to uplift people’s spirits," Cool recalls. The clowns stopped at one room where a toddler was screaming loudly as his father held him. After they knocked and walked into the room, the child suddenly calmed down, watching quietly as they blew bubbles and did a few tricks.
"It was just so powerful to me to see how, in that brief moment, the child calmed down completely," Cool relates. "We decided that since hospice really focuses on life, we needed to incorporate this so it could become available to our patients."
Cool applied for a grant to attend an intensive humor training seminar at the Joel Goodman Humor Institute in Saratoga Springs, NY. The hospice received the grant and Cool attended the training seminar with the hospice’s director.
After returning, Cool tried to put her clown training to good use, but she quickly found that patients found it distracting to see their social worker as a clown. Instead of abandoning the concept, she invited volunteers to become clowns.
Here’s how the program works:
1. Find educational clown information.
Cool suggests hospice managers start by reading books and other literature about clowns. The Internet is a good source for finding clown schools or training seminars, she notes.
"There are churches that do clowning through their ministry, and they may provide some information."
Cool learned that there was a clown school in a larger town about 45 minutes from Ashtabula, so she attended the school herself. The volunteer clowns also have attended to learn how to put on make up and practice making balloon animals.
Once the hospice’s clown program was underway, local professional clowns called to offer their services.
"We had some folks who were clowning on their own in the community, and have gone through the hospice volunteer training program with the sole purpose of being hospice clowns," Cool says.
2. Encourage volunteers to use their own talents.
"Clowning is 25% technical ability and 75% from the heart," Druschel says. "People involved with hospice clowning really do this from the heart. They always say they come back home with much more than they have given."
The Hospice of Ashtabula County has had no difficulty finding volunteers who want to become clowns. After each regular volunteer hospice training program, there are always a few people who would like to take a look at clowning, Druschel says.
Some of the clowns have received hospice care when a family member died. One woman in particular says being on the receiving end of hospice care was such a healing experience for her that she loves returning the service through volunteer work, Druschel says.
Most of the clowns dress in full costume, but a few women find they cannot tolerate the make-up, so they wear a mask or crazy hat instead. Some perform skits; others carry puppets with them and put on a puppet show. "Other people juggle, and some love to sing and have a menu of different songs they can do," Druschel says. "They use their own gifts and talents. It depends on what kind of clown they want to develop."
3. Provide ongoing training.
"Now that we have quite a few clowns, they train each other," Cool says. The clown volunteers hold their own workshops once a month to update their clowning skills. They might watch a video one month, or invite a professional clown to show them how to develop a skit.
"It’s really blossomed into a whole new component to hospice," Druschel says. "The head clown has taken the bull by the horns. She constantly recruits people."
The clowns visit patients for about 15 minutes on average of once a month, and usually make visits in pairs or with two other clowns. This way, they can present a skit and interact with each other as part of the entertainment. They also bring the hospice’s Polaroid camera and take photographs with the patient.
Druschel sometimes visits homes with the clowns. Occasionally, nurses also monitor the clown’s visits.
Although the hospice’s clown volunteers have taken the program quite seriously and are dedicated to improving their clowning craft, this isn’t necessary for a compassionate clowning program to succeed, Druschel says. "The clown’s only purpose is to bring brightness to hospice families’ days," she says.
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