Child Life Director Patrice Brylske plays with a patient.
We recognize the experience of illness and hospitalization can often be challenging. The Child Life Department at Hopkins Children’s works as a part of the health care team to provide children and families with effective coping skills before, during and after hospitalization. Our aim is to enhance the emotional and social well being of your child and family throughout your health care experiences.
At Hopkins Children’s, Child Life specialists work with children of all ages, from newborns to adolescents, and throughout the hospital – from outpatient clinics and the emergency department to inpatient units and pre-op and radiology areas. A multitude of games, toys and videos are available to children in their hospital beds. Those who are well enough can enjoy playrooms, where, they come to learn, no painful or embarrassing treatments are ever administered. Play is the only name of the game there. A hospital playdeck offers a space for outdoor fun, weather permitting.
Our History
The Helen Schnetzer Child Life Department was first established at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1944 and was designed to help bridge the gap between home and hospital environments. It grew out of a volunteer program under the guidance of Onica Prall of the Hood College Child Development Department and housed in the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, Hopkins Children's predecessor. The Johns Hopkins Women's Board provided the initial funding for the Department of Child Life, and continued its support for many years. Learn more. Alums, current specialists and faculty reunited in 2009 for Child Life's 65th anniversary celebration.
Our Child Life Specialists
The needs of a child in a healthcare setting are similar to those of a child at home. These need for security, comfort, acceptance, affection and age-appropriate activities are intensified in a hospital setting. Meeting them is critical to a child's well being; social and intellectual development; comfort; and successful treatment and medical care. While the psychological impact of illness, injury, hospitalization or outpatient care varies in type and by age, it can significantly influence a child's future, emotional security and attitude toward medical care.
Acknowledging the psychological stresses of illness and hospitalization on children and providing relief and comfort are among the chief concerns and focus of Child Life specialists, highly-trained in caring for children and their families in the hospital or physician's office. Physicians and nurses are unable to devote sufficient time to every child to meet children’s intense social and emotion needs completely. So Child Life steps in to compliment their care.
Parents, even those living in with a child in the hospital room, benefit from the additional support of the Child Life specialist who can help their children understand what is happening to them, or must happen in their course of treatment, and provide relaxing entertainment during their recovery and ongoing hospitalization. Specialists are on hand to help siblings cope, too. Our specialists by specialty.
The Importance of Play
Play, Child Life specialists will tell you, can provide a mighty relief from the unpleasant aspects of health care, and its related anxieties. A normal activity of childhood, play helps children develop a sense of mastery in a challenging setting and can enable him or her to exert some control in a difficult environment. Child Life specialists are skilled in leading play that helps children cope and heal. In the hospital, patients are offered a variety of Child Life-sponsored activities, which include the ever-popular Hospital Bingo, arts and crafts, video gaming, movies and visits from entertainers, including our Big Apple Circus clowns, to adorable therapy dogs. Learn more about play at Hopkins Children's.