Child Life Specialist

Position Summary

The Child Life Specialist is responsible for helping pediatric patients and families (to include siblings) understand and manage challenging life events and stressful healthcare experiences related to the child’s life-limiting, life-threatening condition. By providing developmental, educational, and therapeutic interventions for children and their families, the Child Life Specialist helps reduce the stress and anxiety that many children experience as a result of their medical care with resultant impact on the child’s family.  Requires occasional evening and weekend work.

Essential Functions

• Provides therapeutic play activities which facilitate expression of feelings, coping skills and patients’ understanding of medical procedures/diagnoses.
• Collaborates with the interdisciplinary team to screen for patients most appropriate for therapeutic play interventions.
• Initiates and provides individualized and developmentally appropriate therapeutic play activities.
• Develops individual plans of care based on assessment of the child’s need, development, temperament, coping style, medical plan, and available support.
• Provides patients and families opportunities for medical play, memory making, distraction, activity modification, coping, and other child life-associated activities, to support the child and family and, as appropriate, normalize the situation.
• Provides appropriate pre-operative and peri-procedural teaching to reduce patient and family anxiety.
• Provides memory making and anticipatory grief/bereavement support to the child’s family through the course of the child’s sickness and progressive decline in status.
• Collaborates with pediatric social worker on patient/family psychosocial needs.
• Maintains ongoing inter-team communication related to patient/sibling responses to child life interventions and observations.
• Provides child-life focused education to parents/caregivers on topics to include child development, behavioral management, memory making, and coping strategies.
• Helps parents to understand their child's response to treatment andassist siblings to better understand their brother's or sister'sillness/condition.
• Provides child life interventions to siblings addressing issues regarding illness, disease, or injury, treatment and prognosis appropriate to their developmental and coping levels.
• Utilizes and educates the child/parent on appropriate procedural support, medical play, and distraction techniques to increase knowledge and awareness of medical procedures and reduce patient anxiety during stressful situations.
• Educates patients, families and staff on child-life appropriate non-pharmacological pain/anxiety management techniques.
• Demonstrates professionalism by developing, facilitating, and/or accomplishing skills and programs that reflect the state of art of child life.
• Contributes to the collaborative plan of care for patients through participation in weekly interdisciplinary team meetings.
• Participates in professional groups and advisory boards related to pediatric hospice and palliative care.
• Participates in planning and implementation of remembrance events, program support groups.
• Participates in education to program staff and community on child-life related topics.
• Maintains professional certification.
• Demonstrates tact, sensitivity, professional attitudes and judgment relating to patients, families and colleagues.
• Other duties as assigned.

Knowledge and Critical Skills

Knowledge of:                

• Principles and practices of child development, therapeutic recreation.
• Dynamics of family relationships and family systems

Skilled at:

• Effective communication and listening skills
• Ability to work within framework of interdisciplinary team

Experience

• Must have child development/child life or therapeutic recreation experience

License / Certification

• Must be certified as a Child Life Specialist by the Child Life Certifying Commission under the Child Life Council
• Must possess current CPR certification

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Child Development or Therapeutic Recreation

Other Requirements

• Requires occasional evening and weekend work.

The knowledge, skills and abilities listed above are typically acquired through the levels of education and experience listed.  However, any equivalent combination of education and/or experience, which provide an applicant with the listed knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the essential duties and responsibilities of the job, is acceptable.

This description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by employees assigned to this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, or working conditions required of employees in this position. The organization reserves the right to modify or amend the duties of the position or to require that additional tasks be performed as organizational needs change. This description does not constitute a contract of employment, and employment with the organization is at-will, meaning either the employee or the organization may terminate the relationship at any time, with or without cause or notice.