For Families
What is a Child Life Therapist?
A Child Life Therapist is a healthcare professional specialising in child development with a background in education and/or other fields of healthcare.
How do Child Life Therapists work?
Child Life Therapists work within a child and family centred model of care and a trauma informed framework. Through play-based medical and therapeutic sessions, children are given the opportunity to express their emotions and process difficult and challenging medical experiences.
While play can be non-directive allowing for emotional processing and exploration, play can also be directed to allow children to understand, become more familiar with and normalise medical experiences. This play can help provide children with a sense of control and mastery over medical interventions such as observations, bloods tests, imaging (ECHO’s/ECG’s/X-Rays), surgery, cannulation and nitrous use, dressing changes and port access.
What ages do you work with?
The simple answer to that is every age. Child Life Therapists have experience working with infants, children and teenagers from 0-18.
What work could you do with children under 18 months?
When working with infants, our work really lies with their parents or care givers. Having an infant with a diagnosis of a medical condition can be very emotionally challenging. The are so many questions and fears for the future. Child Life Therapists can help you get to know your infant’s cues and discuss ways to developmentally support them through their hospitalisation. They can also provide education on the best ways to procedurally support them and guidance around providing positive sensory experiences in the face of often intrusive investigations and interventions.
What do Child Life Therapists do?
With a distinct set of professional skills, Child Life Therapists use evidence-based interventions which aim to reduce the stress and anxiety that can be associated with health care experiences by focusing on the child’s needs and responses to their condition and associated medical care. Given the growing call for effective psychosocial interventions in an increasingly diverse patient population, a core component of Child Life practice is addressing the individual needs of children and families to improve their care experience. We develop partnerships with children and families that make the healthcare experience more empowering and positive.
Do you work with children after they have a hospital experience too?
There are many things that are Child Life Therapist can do following a hospital experience. In the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event such as illness or injury, traumatic stress can result in a loss of sense of personal safety and be associated with feelings of fear and helplessness. Children can be especially vulnerable to these feelings, and this may result in an observable change of behaviour; such as avoiding things that remind them of the event, having unwanted or intrusive thoughts about what happened or having trouble sleeping, eating or concentrating. While these symptoms can resolve with time, a Child Life Therapist can assist your child in processing these through therapeutic play experiences in a safe environment that allows them to process their feelings and experiences. Emotional regulation activities and the development of coping strategies can also be worked on for future healthcare encounters.
Do you provide sibling support?
Yes! We know that a new diagnosis, hospitalisations or medical care can affect everyone in the family. Often siblings struggle to understand what is happening or have fears around losing their loved ones. They can become distressed with separation from family during longer hospital admissions. Providing a therapeutic and safe space to allow siblings to explore or express their anxiety can help them process the experience. Often siblings will make up their version of what is happening, and this can be scarier or more upsetting than the reality. Child Life Therapists can address misconceptions and provide developmentally appropriate explanations of conditions. We are also able to create personalised social stories to provide developmentally appropriate explanations and give your child the language to understand what is happening.
Where do our sessions occur?
Healing Hearts Beyond is a community-based service. Support can be offered in your own home or within our therapeutic space. There are Child Life Therapists that work within the hospital that can support your child during their hospitalisation or outpatient appointments.
What is medical trauma?
Paediatric medical traumatic stress is defined as “a set a psychological and physiological responses of children and their families to pain, injury, medical procedures, and invasive or frightening treatment experiences” – National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2003.
Every child that is required to undergo medical investigations and treatments will have a different experience. There are many factors that impact the response a child will have; such as past health care encounters, temperament, developmental stage, invasiveness of the procedure, special needs and coping mechanisms. By identifying these risk factors early, a Child Life Therapist can work with the child and family to create an individualised plan to support their future experiences. This may include a support plan that looks at ways to reduce the environmental or sensory triggers of the next encounter. It may look like building a ’coping tool kit’ to draw from, or assisting with, emotional regulation techniques. It may be educating the child through play, so they understand what is expected of them, address misconceptions and prepare for further medical investigations. By supporting a child prior to a hospitalisation, we can reduce the risk of your child experiencing medical trauma.
Why Play?
Jean Piaget, renowned Child Psychologist, once described play as “the work of childhood.” Children are programmed to explore and discover the world, and play is where they can safely accomplish this difficult task. Play is an expansively beneficial and effective way to empower children and families coping with the impacts of medical conditions and hospitalisations. Play has the power to equip children to regulate their emotions and manage their behavioural responses. It is a functional and valuable means whereby children can explore and express emotions in a safe and familiar way. Play is empirically supported as a significant opportunity for promoting further social-emotional, cognitive, and language development. Child Life Therapists also use it as a medium to assess the developmental needs and potential medical misconceptions of paediatric patients and their families.
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​Research literature refers to ‘pretend play’ or ‘therapeutic unstructured play’ as a means to prevent or reduce a child’s anxiety. By being responsive and empathetic, Child life Therapists can assess individual coping needs of children through observation that is supported by a strong, applied knowledge of child and family development.
The active role of the child in play is imperative to building effective coping strategies for managing acute and chronic (or repeated) healthcare experiences. In order for positive coping behaviours to develop, children need the ability to free play by selecting their own play materials and themes within an intentionally designed and supervised environment. Pretend play in these environments cultivates different thought processes and emotion regulation, which are elements of problem solving essential for coping with stress. Here, we recognise the ability of the child to choose and advocate for opportunities for them to exercise control. When play is child-directed, children often perceive themselves as in control, gaining enhanced mastery over their experiences and improved self-efficacy. It is through this perceived control, and increased self-efficacy in stressful situations, that children are taught to be active participants and lifelong consumers in health care.
