International Scholarships

Overview

Annually, the Association of Child Life Professionals (ACLP) provides eight International Scholarships to enable recipients to attend the Child Life Annual Conference.

International Scholarships cover the following:

One-year ACLP membership
Cost of registration for the conference
Up to five nights lodging at the conference hotel
Round-trip airfare up to $1,800 U.S.
Stipend of $250 USD to help toward incidental expenses such as meals, taxi, etc.

Applications are encouraged from any healthcare professional outside North America who has an interest in the psychosocial care of children. The award process will look most favorably on professional practitioners or administrators in a position to be able to introduce, or greatly enhance, psychosocial care consistent with child life practice and principles in their respective parts of the world. Applicants must have proficiency in English, as it is the official language of the conference.

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Who Can Apply for an International Scholarship?

Applicants must be from any country outside North America (residents of Canada, the United States, and U.S. territories are not eligible).

The ACLP Awards Committee welcomes all interested parties to submit an application; however, applicants meeting one or more of the following criteria may be given priority in the scholarship evaluation process:

Applicants who are in a position to introduce, or greatly enhance, psychosocial care consistent with child life best practices and principles at their facility.
Applicants who have recently learned about the field of child life/pediatric psychosocial care.
Applicants who have not previously had the opportunity to participate in similar professional conferences and who do not have the support of a comparable professional organization in their country.

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How To Apply

ACLP will offer eight International Scholarships for the 2023 Child Life Conference in Grapevine, TX, June 15-18, 2023. Residents of Canada, the United States, and all U.S. territories are not eligible for this scholarship. All materials will be reviewed by the ACLP Awards Committee and recipients will be selected and notified in September, 2022.

Instructions to Apply

All materials, completed application and a CV/resume, must be received no later than 11:59pm U.S. Eastern Time, on August 15, 2022.
The CV/resume must be between 1-3 pages (preferred). The CV/resume is not scored or seen by reviewers as it is used only for confirmation of employment if selected.
Contact information for the appropriate authority at the applicant’s place of employment must be included on the application and CV/resume and is subject to confirmation.
Fill in ALL sections of the application - write "N/A" if not applicable.

Questions about how to apply? Email awards@childlife.org.

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Expectations for Scholarship Recipients

Completed applications must be received by ACLP on or before 11:59 pm U.S. Eastern Time, August 15, 2022.
All applicants must discuss this opportunity with their supervisor and determine eligibility to attend the conference in advance of the scholarship being awarded. Contact information for the appropriate authority at the applicant’s place of employment must be included on the application and is subject to confirmation.
Scholarship recipients are responsible for checking their health/medical insurance to ensure adequate coverage while visiting the United States. In the event of a medical emergency or medical treatment, ACLP cannot assume any liability regarding the provision or cost of healthcare services.
Scholarship recipients are responsible for obtaining any travel visas required by the United States and any other country visited in transit. The recipient must pay for any associated costs themselves.
Scholarship recipients are required to attend all five nights which is the allotted number of days given to them per the scholarship.
Scholarship recipients are required to attend an educational session (including the opening and closing keynote) in each time slot that such sessions are conducted from Friday, June 15, through Sunday, June 18 and to attend all conference-wide networking and official social functions.
Scholarships will cover registration fees for all sessions mentioned above (if applicable), along with covering the actual cost of round-trip economy-class airfare up to but not exceeding $1,800 USD; up to 5 nights’ accommodation in the official conference hotel, and a small stipend to cover meals and incidentals not provided by ACLP during the Annual Conference. Fees for visas, baggage, and transportation to/from airports will not be covered.
Recipients will make air reservations through the ACLP headquarters office. There are no exceptions unless approved by ACLP staff.
Recipients will be responsible for providing a photograph and a current bio.
After the conference, recipients will write a 300 to 600-word essay about the practice of, and/or prospects for, child life in their country and about their attendance at the Annual Conference. This report will be shared with the ACLP Board of Directors and may appear in the ACLP Bulletin or on the ACLP website. This essay will be due in July 2023.

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Previous International Scholarship Recipients

In 2022, ACLP awarded eight International Scholarships for the 40th Annual Child Life Conference. Read about the 2022 scholarship recipients below.

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2022 International Scholarship Recipients

Atoofa Najmi

Atoofa Najmi is the team lead of the Child Life Services at Pediatric Psychosocial Department, The Indus Hospital, Pakistan. She has a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology. She has been working with chronically ill and hospitalized children for last two and a half years, to make their hospital journey a smoother experience through use of play, art and psychological preparation. Her area of interests lie in advocating for use of psychological preparation, addressing psychosocial needs of children with complex illnesses and raising awareness about the Child Life profession in her country.
Kristina Silfvenius

I come from Helsinki, Finland, and have worked at Helsinki University Children´s Hospital as a Child Life Specialist. Where I participated in founding Child Life Specialists I Finland.

As a Rotary Foundation Scholar, I spent a year working at Vancouver Children´s Hospital in Canada at the Child Life Department and studied special education at UBC, University of British Columbia.

In 1987 I moved to Stockholm, Sweden and work at Astrid Lindgren Children´s Hospital, Karolinska University Hospital. Here I was on the board for Child Life Specialists in Sweden for many years.

I have been working with diverse diagnoses, with in- and outpatients in all age groups, helping children and adolescents preparing them for different kinds of procedures, and helping to promote coping strategies and minimizing the adverse effects of hospitalization and health care encounters. Providing interventions that include therapeutic play, expressive modalities, and psychological preparation to facilitate coping and normalization.

Now I mainly work with the burns patients in the outpatient clinic, and as inpatients, and I´m part of the burns team.

Within the hospital and outside I actively promote and inform about Children’s Rights according to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, that is a legal right in Sweden since Jan 2019.

In 2015 I joined Operation Smile and have had the opportunity to go on 12 missions in different parts of the world as a Child Life Specialist. The last mission was in Oujda, Morocco. A fantastic opportunity to promote children´s rights.

I have been part of the medical adviser board for Operation Smile Sweden and now a Psychosocial Advisor on the Psychosocial Medical Advisory Council (MAC) Operation Smile International.
Madiha Mustafa

I am from Pakistan, I have done my masters in psychology from University of Karachi. After that I worked with children with special needs for about 4 years, I worked on providing educational support for students with learning difficulties who were attending mainstream classroom in mainstream schools.

During my professional carrier I got a chance to work with different organizations as a volunteer in different capacities were I did mentoring for students to become responsible and productive members of the society and psychological assessment of children.

I have been working at The Indus Hospital as a Child Life Counselor for last 4 years, where I get training to be a counselor. My work involves working with children who are under treatment of any kind of prolonged disease, trauma or injury.

I am providing psychosocial care and helping children and their families during medical procedures, offer counseling, participate in therapeutic and medical play, and provide education to families, as well as plan support programs and events.
Maryam Al-Bahar

I am a child life student from Kuwait City, Kuwait. I work in a non-profit organization, Kuwait Association for the Care of Children in Hospital, that provides child life services to children in local government hospitals. I am leading a new child life program at Jaber Hospital. I recently completed my Practicum training at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in pursuit of the Child Life certification to become the first Kuwaiti Child Life Specialist. I have three years of experience working and volunteering in pediatric healthcare, hospice settings and camps.
Nicola Mooney

My Hospital Play career now spans about 16 years, including my work in the 1990’s in at the Royal London in Whitechapel. I was able to attend the first day release Hospital Play course run at Southbank College. After qualifying and immigrating to Sydney, I worked for six years as a Paediatric Occupational Therapist for a charity organization. This was predominantly working with children who were struggling at school, doing standardized assessments.

I gravitated back to Play in Hospital and have now worked in Sydney Children’s Hospital for the last nine years. Here, I have worked in a variety of different clinical area, including; Neurology, Orthopeadics and in Medical Imaging. I have worked the last 18 months on our Intensive Care Ward and our Medical Day Unit.
Priscila Flores Carrillo

I’m Priscila, I was born and grew up in Quito - Ecuador, I have 28 years old. I'm Nursing Assistant, Occupational Therapist and Child Life Professional. I studied my degree of Nursing Assistant and my degree in Occupational Therapy in Ecuador, and I graduated from Master Child Life in Barcelona - Spain. In my hospital practices I worked with children, adolescents, and their families, also, with children with special abilities, others apparently healthy, also populations with various diseases and disorders.

I was volunteer in a dialysis clinic, and after I started to work in the same, with young patients, adults and older adults, also in gerontological centers, and home therapies, I have always tried to transpose what I studied in therapy and in my master, provide beneficial psychosocial care for all my patients, trying to work in all spheres of children and in other patients, providing quality care for their emotions with tools such as games, music therapy, art therapy, clown therapy, correct education of illness, among other resources, for adequate empowerment and coping with the circumstances to which must be faced.

Today due to the critical situation worldwide, in the absence of opportunities to work in the public and private sector in my country, I decided to open my rehabilitation clinic, where I provide my services to the child, adolescent, adult and elderly population. In my treatments I always to apply the Child Life principles, giving priority to emotions, feelings and spirituality, to start from an empathic and compassionate therapy.

In addition, Occupational Therapy and Nursing are professions that can be combined with Child Life Profession, and for me this is very positive, because I can make my three professions merge, with the objective of providing better structured and higher quality services to infants, adolescents and their families and other patients.
Sara Costa

Sara is a qualified Portuguese Recreational Therapist, she has been working for the past two years, at Al Jalila Children’s Hospital (AJCH) in Dubai, UAE, under the umbrella of the Mental Health Centre of Excellence (MHCE). Working under the Mental Health Centre, Sara is in the process of establishing a Child Life program within the children’s hospital in collaboration with the Child life team, currently the UAE’s only child life department. Sara is one of the first Recreational Therapists in Dubai, where she is helping to develop the profession and bring awareness within the country. She has a strong desire to implement and work through a psychosocial approach for a better care of patients and their families.

At AJCH Sara has been working with children and adolescents of all ages suffering from the most diverse medical and mental health conditions. In her work, she uses a variety of therapeutic mediators to improve quality of health, emotional safety, emotional stability, coping and overall well-being. She is currently studying for her master’s degree in the USA, to become a Board Certified
Sonia Tordera

I am Sonia Tordera and I am 25. I am one of the four professionals working on the Child Life program in Barcelona Children’s Hospital. This program is working since 2004 and we are the only program in Spain. I graduated in Psychology in 2012 and afterwards I studied the master degree on its first promotion on Emotional Care in Hospitalized Children according to the Child Life model also in Barcelona.

After that I started as a volunteer in playrooms and waiting rooms in Barcelona Children’s Hospital and join in a siblings camp in Ireland with the Barretstown foundation. I keep collaborating with the hospital in Patient Experience projects as a volunteer and it was then, in October 2017, when I started working in the already created Child Life program. Since then I have learnt a lot from my colleagues and I worked in many areas of the hospital. I am working on psychological preparation before surgeries and medical procedures (cardiology, autism patients, cochlear implant and patients in bone marrow transplant) and accompanying during medical procedures when its needed. I also collaborate with patient experience projects improving families experiences.

The other big part of our job is coordinate and work together with the friendly hospital program and professionals which includes all the resources related to keep children being children in the hospital: school, hospital clowns, art, animal assisted therapy team and musicians. My goal is to keep going on and spread our profession as much as we can. I would really love to make this dream and project bigger as we can make the hospitals a better places in all the places we can.