Child Life Specialist

The Child Life Specialist plays a vital role in supporting children and their families during challenging medical experiences. This position focuses on enhancing the emotional and psychological well-being of pediatric patients through developmentally appropriate interventions. The Child Life Specialist collaborates with healthcare teams to create a supportive environment that promotes coping, understanding, and resilience in children facing medical challenges.

Key responsibilities include:

• Administering patient evaluations and applying evaluation techniques to determine functional status and identify service needs.
• Providing direct services on inpatient units totaling 42 beds, including assessments, developmental play and stimulation, medical play and patient education, behavior plans and support, therapy co-treats, group activities, family and sibling support, bereavement support, and special programming.
• Assisting patients with selection and rehearsal of coping skills relevant to the child’s developmental age and experience. Collaborates with multidisciplinary team and psychology to increase coping, manage anxiety, create behavior plans to increase compliance and/or participation in therapies, and address overall adjustment to illness and hospitalization.
• Conducting medical play with patients and families to facilitate understanding of medical care and normalization to environment.
• Evaluating and reporting patient progress in multidisciplinary rounds, to family and to supervisor.
• Coordinating community outings for appropriate inpatients as a means of facilitating successful community re-entry, a means of diversion from hospitalization and enhancement of normal growth and development.
• Selecting, training, supervising, evaluating and terminating child life interns and volunteers on the medical inpatient units.

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree required; masters preferred.
• At least 1 year of Child Life experience required.
• Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS) through ACLP or must obtain license within six months of being hired.

Franciscan Children’s requires all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and Flu, (unless you are eligible for a medical or religious exemption).