Gateway Casino donates $30K to Art-Based Therapy Program at Children’s Hospital

Gateway Casinos announced a $30,000 donation on Friday that will be given to the Creative-Art Based Therapies in the CAMHCP at Victoria Hospital in London Ont.

Gateway Casinos & Entertainment’s corporate giving program, called ‘Gateway GIVES’, created a partnership with Children’s Health Foundation to provide funding to expand the Creative Art-Based Therapies in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care Program (CAMHCP).

The art-based therapy helps with mental health treatment for children and youth, allowing them to find ways to process and cope with difficult situations and emotions.

This type of therapy helps adolescents who struggle with eating disorders, self-harm behaviours, complex anxiety and more.

“Music and art therapy is really a very necessary program within mental health,” said Jessica Blake, clinical manager of child and adolescent mental health inpatients.

She added, “It allows for a safe therapeutic environment for our patient to be able to express themselves to be able to experience a wider range of emotions, to figure out how to cope with their mental health when they’re back out in the community.”

Rob Mitchell, director of communications and public affairs at Gateway pointed to the company wanting to help with the growing need of mental health services.

“This is of course our 30th anniversary and this just seemed like the logical thing to do. There’s so much activity going on here and as was alluded to in our remarks, COVID has been particularly hard on young people and children,” he said. 

Nevada Burwell, youth resource facilitator with B8 at the hospital said on Friday, “The kids, especially on B8 love art and music. They live for art and music therapy and they're all so talented and it means so much to them.” 

Gateway GIVES is celebrating the company’s 30th anniversary. Gateway has seven locations across southwestern Ontario.