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Department

Job Summary

The Child Life Specialist I ("Specialist") is is a key member of the pediatric healthcare team. The Specialist, under general supervision, works in a health care setting focusing on the emotional and developmental needs of children and their families.

The Specialist reduces stress associated with the health care experience and enables a child and their family to cope by providing play experiences, presenting medical information in a way that children can understand, and encouraging family involvement in the child's medical care.

The Specialist routinely works in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary healthcare team and other professionals in ambulatory care, emergency care, and inpatient settings.

Essential Functions:

• Clinical Interventions: Develops a plan of care including interventions to address the needs of the child and family.
  • Family and sibling support: Utilizing a family-centered care approach to ensure the patient and family’s individual, cultural, and social needs are met and to provide developmentally appropriate education and support to other children in the family to help them cope with a family member in the hospital.
  • Preparation and procedural support: Provides psychological preparation to children prior to undergoing medical procedures using expressive/medical play and other techniques to minimize stress or fears related to medical procedures.
  • Developmental/Therapeutic play: Uses normative and/or therapeutic play opportunities to encourage expression of feelings, process difficult events, explore positive coping skills, promote a sense of mastery and understanding of health care experiences, and to minimize stress associated with health care experiences.
  ▪ Recognizes the developmental issues specifically related to healthcare experiences.
  • Diagnosis education: Utilizing developmentally appropriate language to explain a new diagnosis, injury, illness, or death.
  • Grief support: Providing memory making and legacy building items, developmentally appropriate education and resources for families, and facilitating bedside visits.
  (50%)
• Communication:
  • Monitors the child’s reaction to hospitalization and provides the staff with timely information to supplement the health care services to the child.
  • Consults with family and staff to ensure clear communication and that the best interests of the patient are consistently met.
  • Provides education regarding the scope of child life services, the impact of health care on development, providing developmentally appropriate and emotionally safe medical care, and professional boundaries.
  (15%)
• Assessment:
  • Assessing the patient’s current developmental level and providing interventions to enhance development.
  • Completing Psychosocial Risk Assessment in Pediatricsto evaluate and mitigate pediatric medical traumatic stress.
  (15%)
• Charting:
  • Documents services in patient chart.
  • Updates documentation as care plans change.
  (10%)
• Supply Management:
  • Selects and maintains program materials related to the Child Life role including but not limited to both developmental & normative toys/items, distraction items, and technology.
  (5%)
• Volunteers/Student Management:
  • Supervises volunteers and others participating in the Child Life Program.
  (5%)

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree required.

Work Experience:

• Two years of experience as a Certified Child Life Specialist in a hospital setting is highly preferred.
  

Licenses:

• Eligible for CCLS certification or CLS Certified - ACLP - Association of Child Life Professionals required.
• BLS-Basic Life Support (BLS/CPR) - AHA - American Heart Association required.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Active Listening — Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Child Life—Intermediate of knowledge and expertise of normal human growth and development. With intermediate skill set to provide clinical child life interventions to decrease medical trauma/stressors within a medical setting.
• Communicating — Communicating effectively orally and in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience, express or exchange ideas by verbal communications.
• Critical Thinking — Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Customer Service —Familiarity with the principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Developing Objectives and Strategies — Establishing long-range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve them.
• Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships — Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others and maintaining them over time.
• Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work — Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
• Problem solving – Entry level ability to systematically analyze problems, draw relevant conclusions and devise appropriate courses of action.
• Psychosocial Support – Entry level skills in the ability to assess the psychosocial needs for children and their families and implement appropriate interventions to mitigate psychological trauma and provide emotional safety.
• Technology - Familiarity with technology platforms, for example: Apple Products (ipad) & the Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• Thinking Creatively — Developing, designing, or creating new applications, ideas, relationships, systems, or products, including artistic contributions.
• Time Management — Managing one's own time.

Shift

Work Type

Salary

Benefits

At Denver Health, we take care of the people who take care of our community. Our benefits are built to support your life, your family, and your future — with exceptional retirement contributions, and nationally recognized well-being programs. We invest in your growth through tuition assistance, career advancement pathways, and professional development — while also offering meaningful financial advantages through loan forgiveness eligibility and employer contributions. When you join Denver Health, you’re joining a mission-driven organization that invests in you.

Here is a small list of our benefit programs:

• Social security replacement retirement plan with employer contribution of 3%
• On-site employee fitness center and wellness classes
• Community resource navigation support
• Childcare discount programs & exclusive perks on large brands, travel, and more
• Education & development opportunities including career pathways and coaching

About Denver Health

Denver Health is an integrated, high-quality academic healthcare system considered a model for the nation that includes a Level I Trauma Center, a 555-bed acute care medical center, Denver’s 911 emergency medical response system, 10 family health centers, 19 school-based health centers, Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety, the Public Health Institute at Denver Health, Denver Health Medical Plan and Denver Health Foundation.

As Colorado’s primary, and essential, safety-net healthcare system, Denver Health is a mission-driven organization that has provided millions in uncompensated care for the uninsured each year.

Located near downtown Denver, Denver Health is just minutes away from many of the cultural and recreational activities Denver has to offer.

Denver Health is an equal opportunity employer (EOE). We value the unique ideas, talents and contributions reflective of the needs of our community. All job applicants for safety-sensitive positions must pass a pre-employment drug test, once a conditional offer of employment has been made. Applicants will be considered until the position is filled.