Testimonials
Quotes from our healthcare partners, from families and from participants in our trainings.
Our Healthcare Partners
“Heart Touch is an organization that has created a model of volunteerism that is certainly remarkable. They have taken on the careful training of massage therapists to develop them into skilled compassionate health care providers and have partnered with us to create a hospital based massage program that, in its limited scope, is unparalleled.”
Karen Livingston, RPT
Manager Rehabilitation Services
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
“On behalf of the NICU nursing staff at UCLA, I want to express our utmost gratitude towards your organization. Your dedicated and skilled infant massage trainers have provided education to more than 50 nurses and respiratory therapists in our NICU. This unique experience reminded all of us who take care of sick babies everyday the importance of nurturing the human spirit, no matter how small the patient is.”
Bess Heliker, RN, MN
NICU Clinical Nurse Specialist
Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA
“I have worked with The Heart Touch Project and its volunteers since 2003. Heart Touch has helped to develop our Infant Massage Program, teach our nurses infant massage, and provide volunteers for Gentle Touch/Infant Massage sessions with our babies. The volunteers are profoundly compassionate and professional with the babies, families and staff in our unit in such a variety of circumstances and often involving a great deal of stress. Heart Touch has been an essential partner in making the dream of our massage program become a reality.”
Ellen Horwitz, RN
Director NICCU Massage Program
Neonatal and Infant Critical Care Unit
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
“During a patient’s fragile last months and days, the patient spends longer periods of time in bed. Your massage therapists have made a significant impact on our patients by bringing them comfort and dignity, not to mention the volunteer’s kind smile and conversation. You have put together a great team of caring and committed massage therapists who are willing to help and love our patients.”
Donna Miller
Hospice Care of the West
“Your volunteers in providing massages for our patients have contributed to the better care of our patients who are in their last stages of life. The massages not only assist in the reduction of stress for our patients, they also provide kind human touch to those who sometimes just need a touch from someone who cares. The Heart Touch Project has assisted me in doing a better job of providing services for our hospice patients. I personally see the positive impact it has, not only the patients to whom the services are being rendered, but to their family as well, as they see that their family member is receiving not only medical care, but emotional and therapeutic touch as well.”
Elizabeth Davis
VITAS Innovative Hospice Care
From Families
“The Heart Touch massage provided by your volunteer was the only thing my father had to look forward to his final weeks. Thank you for making a difference in his life.”
“My daughter was in the NICU for the first weeks of her life. Thanks to Heart Touch I knew that she was being nurtured and cared for when my husband and I couldn’t be there. I attribute her health today to the loving and healing hands of her Heart Touch Volunteer.”
“The word ‘joy’ would hardly be thought applicable to the painful last month of a life with AIDS. But my friend experienced laugh-out loud joy, happy tears of relief and release, and a sense of well-being and wholeness when he received the touch therapy provided by The Heart Touch Project.”
“I want to thank the Heart Touch volunteer. It was very comforting the way she treated my son in his last days. Just watching her give him a massage, it came through loud and clear that your volunteers have very special talents. It made such a difference to him at the end.”
“The Heart Touch volunteer was simply a God-send—-so caring and effective. Her sessions were the highlight of my mom’s three-month say the senior assisted living center. Thank you so much.”
“I want to thank you for all of your love and support you gave to my partner and myself during his final days. The services provided by The Heart Touch Project gave him a tremendous amount of relief, as he was suffering so much. I will never forget the expression on his face every week after his therapist came over, and the look of ecstasy in his eyes when the session was over.”
From Participants in Heart Touch Trainings
“Through the training, I learned that touching is so powerful! I will be more conscious that communication is more than words.”
“The receiving and giving exercises using comforting touch helped me understand what a large effect touch can have.”
“I was so moved. The touch activities and exercises affected me profoundly.”
“The training focused on honoring the client as a person. I learned the importance of expressing care and compassion through touch especially.
“Thank you for the sensitivity towards our work, the valuable lesson of being compassionate, listening and connecting with others. This was a great preparation for what we will encounter in our volunteer work with individuals at the end stage of life.”
