Child Life Specialist

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Child Life Specialist assists the patient, family, and health care team in identifying the psychosocial and developmental factors which impact the health care experience for the patient and family. This position requires competency in a wide range of therapeutic modalities allowing for a combination of diverse interventions. The Child Life Specialist must exhibit and deliver strong customer service skills with patients, families, students, volunteer staff and the health care team. Also required are effective group facilitation skills, strong interpersonal communication skills, a high degree of creativity, effective time and resource management, flexibility, strong oral and written communication skills and the ability to learn and utilize computer applications.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

1. Provides age-appropriate assessments of patients,family members and significant others in order to obtain information about the patients developmental, emotional, social, psychological, cultural, and environmental situation
2. Demonstrates competence in providing a wide range of developmental and psychosocial interventions to aide patients and family members in coping with the stress of illness, hospitalization, pain, bereavement and/or loss; assist families with parenting issues
3. Provides safe and therapeutic environmental enhancement to impact positive coping of the patient and family with hospitalization and medical encounters
4. Facilitates group processes while attending to individual needs to support socialization, interaction and positive coping with hospitalization and medical encounters
5. Works within an interdisciplinary health care team; communicating with team members, integrating interdisciplinary goals into child life treatment plans, and documenting in the medical record to collaborate with and support the plan of care

1. Provides inservice and education in support psychosocial and developmental needs of pediatric patients to community and members of the inter-disciplinary team to advocate for the psychosocial needs of patients and families
2. Trains, supervises, and mentors child life interns, practicum students and volunteers to ensure safe and appropriate interaction with all patient and families in the health care setting
3. Prioritizes and organizes work for accurate and timely outcomes to ensure patients and families assessed at highest psychosocial risk receive appropriate child life intervention and services

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Child Life, Child Development or closely related field; Master’s degree preferred
• Child Life Certification: Employee will have one year from date of hire to sit for and successfully pass the Child Life Certification Exam
• Thorough knowledge of child development and the ability to assess with visual and auditory acuity and respond effectively to the individual, age specific needs with high quality child life interventions
• AHA Basic Life Support (BLS) required

Salary Range: Minimum 23.02/hour - Maximum 36.83/hour. Compensation will be commensurate with equity and experience for roles of similar scope and responsibility. In cases where the range is displayed as a $0 amount, salary discussions will occur during candidate screening calls, before any subsequent compensation discussion is held between the candidate and any hiring authority.

The Hospital reserves the right to modify employee schedules as needed.

We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment, where we embrace and celebrate our differences, where all employees feel valued, contribute to our mission of serving the community, and engage in equitable healthcare delivery and workforce practices.

Johns Hopkins Health System and its affiliates are drug-free workplace employers.