Your Child Life Stories: Part 3

ChildLife: Blog

Your Child Life Stories: Part 3

Oct 22, 2025, 15:38 PM by Aubree Bailey

This Child Life Month, we collected stories by child life professionals to build community in the profession and showcase the impact of the profession on its members, children and families, and workplaces. We received so many wonderful stories about your child life journeys, reasons for choosing child life, supporting patients, novel ideas, and meaningful experiences. We look forward to sharing them on our #ChildLIfe blog in a new series "Your Child Life Stories."

Dagney Willey Adamson, CCLS: Innovation in Internships

With the federal changes as well as changes to the requirements for child life internship, my business partner and I had the idea to create a shared internship model through our private practice that quickly gained momentum to create three internship opportunities already this January. It really fueled my energy and momentum that the majority of the child life teams and child life specialists working in community settings were ready to jump in and make it happen. We have nine different partners so far! We have had so much support, creativity, innovation and so many CCLS jumping in in various ways to aid in the students learning with seminars, panels, and professional development. It has given me so much drive to continue to collaborate and find new ways to do our work and learn from each other.

Anna Paliotti, CCLS: Reflecting on 20 Years

As I commemorate my 20th year as a Child life specialist, I can’t help but feel that it's serendipitous to have encountered the ACLP's call for "Child Life Stories" today! I realized this was perhaps the perfect opportunity to pause, reflect, and write down a few of my thoughts about these past two decades. It’s no small task! However the more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be a reoccurring theme surfacing, and so I explored that further in my reflection. This theme revolves around the privileged role we, as child life specialists occupy within medical settings and beyond. Throughout the years, I have worked to provide developmental and emotional support, educate children, adolescents, and caregivers about medical procedures, have assisted with coping strategies, facilitated legacy building, supported siblings, organized birthday celebrations, helped bereaved families, celebrated meaningful holidays with patients, delivered presentations, educated and supervised interns, trained volunteers, engaged in therapeutic play, collaborated with interdisciplinary teams, and advocated for patients and their unique needs—all sometimes within the span of just one week! These examples highlight the distinctiveness of Child Life, a profession that genuinely enables us to be supportive allies for the patients and caregivers we work with. We act as advocates, educators, supporters, and caregivers, delivering comprehensive care that addresses the unique needs of every patient and their family as they navigate the hardships that come with hospitalization. Just this morning, while I was orienting a volunteer to the Hematology/Oncology unit where I work, I described the role of a child life specialist. She responded with, "Wow, that sounds like the best job in the world!" As I paused to reflect on her words, I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing (yes, even after 20 years).

Kia Ferrer, PhD, CCLS, GC-C: Family-Centered Care

Helping the parent-baby dyad is the epitome of facilitating a first-time parent's emotional safety throughout their NICU experience. My PhD in child development has trained me to focus on promoting empowerment, understanding, and lessing the possibility of any form of medical trauma on the parent and neonate. This careful developmental assessment allows me to identify which support, education or therapeutic intervention the baby may benefit from including: developmental play in collaboration with PT, parent education in collaboration with social work, and memory-making in collaboration with our chaplain services. Child life integrates care from all disciplines to make sure the WHOLE family is supported by taking a holistic approach to psychosocial support while hospitalized.