About us

18 children live in Kinderhaus AtemReich, who are ventilated and need interdisciplinary intensive care. Before they were admitted to AtemReich, they were permanently cared for in the intensive care units of the children’s hospitals, although their acute treatment was already completed. However, as they still need nursing and medical care, curative education and therapy, it is in many cases not possible to care for them at home with their parents, as outpatient care cannot be or is not yet guaranteed. Our aim is therefore to offer these children a protected place far away from intensive care units and the hectic hospital routine, where they can grow up and develop.

The reasons for admitting children to Kinderhaus AtemReich are different:

• Complex clinical pictures
• Medical technology dependence
• Family situation and living situation

Die Zusammenarbeit mit den Eltern der im Kinderhaus AtemReich betreuten Kinder gehört zu unseren verbindlichen Aufgabenstellungen und ist uns ein besonderes Anliegen. Die Familien sind Experten für ihr Kind. Ihre Erfahrungen und das Wissen der Familien hilft uns eine individuelle Pflege, Betreuung und Therapie und eine pädagogisch-therapeutische Förderung umzusetzen. So schaffen wir gemeinsam einen Lebensraum und ein Zuhause das Lebensqualität, Teilhabe und erfüllende Erlebnisse möglich macht. Auch die Geschwisterkinder werden in das Geschehen im Kinderhaus AtemReich einbezogen. Im Kinderhaus AtemReich können sich Geschwister mit der Situation, einen kranken Bruder oder eine kranke Schwester zu haben, vertraut machen und den Umgang mit dem kranken oder behinderten Geschwisterkind lernen. 

The care and support is based on a holistic concept and is intended to meet all the needs of the children being cared for. An interdisciplinary team of specialists is committed to accompany the children on their way through life with a great deal of competence and commitment. The interplay of medical, nursing, educational, therapeutic, psychological and socio-family aspects characterize the concept of care.

Our goal is to enable the best possible development and social integration of the children.

For an optimal cooperation, the joint planning, documentation, implementation and evaluation of interdisciplinary care is implemented. This includes developmental, educational, medical, nursing, psychosocial and therapeutic aspects.

The content of the nursing care refers, among other things, to the nursing models of Nancy Roper and Marie-Luise Friedeman, modified for the special situation of ventilator-equipped children. It includes elements of activating care and includes planned, documented and evaluated basic and treatment care.

In a holistic interdisciplinary approach, nursing care includes medical requirements, pedagogical-therapeutic aspects, general nursing measures, assistance in organizing the individual child-oriented daily routine and the consideration of self-determination.

Pedagogical specialists organise the daily group routine. Individual communication aids, offers for self-determined and self-effective action as well as for the promotion of perception, implementation of the principle of normalization, preservation and promotion of the quality of life and the promotion of well-being are concerns, tasks and guiding actions in everyday life.

School support

Kinderhaus AtemReich features two outdoor classes of the Ludwig-Maria-Ferdinand-School of the Institute for the Blind. School-age children are taught by special education teachers.

Since long-term ventilation often also causes physical limitations in children, therapeutic treatment is given a great deal of attention. The children experience individual holistic physiotherapy according to Vojta, the Pörnbacher or Bobath concepts. Speech therapy treatments such as the therapy of chewing and swallowing disorders according to Castillo Morales and occupational therapy treatments are used in a targeted manner. Music, riding and art therapy offer the children a further opportunity to express themselves and perceive themselves.

The medical care of the children is ensured within the framework of the health insurance medical care. In addition, the pedeatric clinic of the Dritter Ordern hospital provides a 24-hour on-call medical service. Consultation physicians from the Children’s Hospital Dritter Orden and from other hospitals can be called upon for special examinations.

Doctors from various disciplines from all over Munich work in close cooperation with the AtemReich Children’s Hospital.

For the children

Satisfaction, well-being and happiness determine life in Kinderhaus AtemReich. The aim is not to reduce the children to what they cannot do despite their illness, their impairments and their need for care – but to accept them as fully-fledged fellow human beings and to enable them to participate in social life according to their individual possibilities.