Creating opportunities for building meaningful connections and compassionate self-care with ourselves, children and families
Therapeutic Resources
"We are creating and sustaining healthier, more meaningful relationships in our lives as we continue to cultivate and develop positive relationships with ourselves. When we respect, value and honor our emotions and our unique life stories with nurturing self-acceptance, our ability to offer compassionate care to others will miraculously improve." Evelyn Barber, Healing Nectar Arts
Cards and Posters
Delightful, artistic flashcards and posters helping children, young adults and families to explore emotions, facilitate self-care and build coping and life skills
Training
Book Evelyn today for in-house or online training for your family or childcare facility.
Humor
Laughter is the best medicine. Here's how to use it in your daily life.
Evelyn Ann Barber, MA, BA, CCLS
As an educator for thirty years (MA in Human Development, Leadership in Education and a BA Child Development) and a Certified Child Life Specialist since 2012, I am deeply committed to the well being and health and healing possibilities for children and families. I believe that optimal “compassionate care” begins with opportunities for meaningful connection. Nurturing relationship is the foundation for healthier humans and healing. To offer the best care we must begin with ourselves and our own story journey. Compassionate self-care is a gateway to enhance our ability to respond and improve our relationships with those we serve.
My extensive work with children and families as an academic educator and as a certified child life specialist helped me to realize that building connections of trust and safety are necessary foundations for helping to reduce feelings of isolation, anxiety and fear and offer opportunities for fostering coping and life skills.
I wanted to provide psycho-socially and developmentally appropriate support to the specific needs of children and families in non-threatening, play-based ways. I also wanted to provide educational opportunities and resources that are responsive to the needs of the child and family in order to promote optimal learning and mastery.
I decided that to make these valuable meaningful connections and to adhere to these goals I needed to create a gateway resource designed to support and enhance the work of an educator, social worker, child life specialist, therapist or parent.
Creative and therapeutic activities that promote Compassionate-Self Care provide psychosocial support and create opportunities for feelings of control, self-expression and resilience.
I believe that healthy relationships begin with one's self in order to offer compassionate care to another becoming the foundation to build coping skills and quality self-care. Offering optimal care requires practicing compassionate self-care. Creating connections and awareness to one's self-story with empathy and self-respect, develops a greater capacity for providing quality patient and family-centered care in clinical practice, for students in educational settings and parents with children at home.
From years of experience I realized, taking care of one's self by providing quality time to create space for self-reflection, meditation, mindfulness practices and self-expression, greatly improved the compassionate care given to others. These actions increased the opportunities to share self-care skills in my professions with others. After researching it became clear that there was a need for enhanced resources of this kind and so I decided to create one that offered a variety of opportunities for compassionate self-care, health and healing.
The C.A.R.E.S Framework provides opportunities that guide and engage those that use them and help to develop healthy coping skills for life and a greater sense of well-being.