Child Life and Family-Centered Care

In today's evidence-based healthcare culture, child life specialists must demonstrate knowledge and skill not only in clinical care, but also in planning and evaluating the impact of their interventions—yet few resources exist to provide research skills and support for these practitioners. To adequately evaluate, improve, and innovate patient and family outcomes, it is essential that all providers understand the key inquiry pathways of research.

Child life is a profession that draws on the insights of history, sociology, anthropology and psychology to serve children and families in many critical stress points in their lives, but especially when they are ill, injured or disabled and encounter the hosts of caregivers and institutions that collaborate to make them well. Children and their families can become overwhelmed by the task of understanding and navigating the healthcare environment and continue to face challenges through their daily encounters. It is the job of child life professionals to provide care and guidance in these negotiations to serve as culture brokers, interpreters of the healthcare apparatus to family and child and the child to medical professionals. Despite the best efforts to provide quality, sensitive psychosocial care to children and their families, they remain vulnerable to lingering aftereffects. The goal of this revised edition is to help prepare child life specialists to deliver the highest level of care to children and families in the context of these changing realities. Each chapter has been substantially revised and two new chapters have been added. This book will be a valuable resource for not only child life specialists but also nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, social workers and other hospital personnel.

The Handbook of Medical Play Therapy and Child Life brings together the voices and clinical experiences of dedicated clinical practitioners in the fields of play therapy and child life. This volume offers fresh insights and up to date research in the use of play with children, adolescents, and families in medical and healthcare settings. Chapters take a strength-based approach to clinical interventions across a wide range of health-related issues, including autism, trauma, routine medical care, pending surgeries both large and small, injury, immune deficiency, and more. Through its focus on the resiliency of the child, the power of play, and creative approaches to healing, this handbook makes visible the growing overlap and collaboration between the disciplines of play therapy and child life.　

Winner of the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year 2011 (Category: Maternal And Child Health) Building on children's natural inclinations to pretend and reenact, play therapy is widely used in the treatment of psychological problems in childhood. This book is the only one of its kind with more than 200 therapeutic activities specifically designed for working with children and teenagers within the healthcare system. It provides evidence-based, age-appropriate activities for interventions that promote coping. The activities target topics such as separation anxiety, self-esteem issues, body image, death, isolation, and pain. Mental health practitioners will appreciate its "cookbook" format, with quickly read and implemented activities.

This book explores the social conditions that promote pediatric resilience. It presents resilience as a set of complex interpersonal, institutional, and political relationships that affect young patients' ability to "do well" in the face of medical adversity. Chapters analyze the impact of chronic or disabling conditions on children's development, while highlighting effective interventions that promote family well-being. This book integrates research from psychology, social work, medical anthropology, child life specialty, palliative care, public health, and nursing to examine a wide variety of family, cultural, and medical contexts. Practical strategies for supporting children and families are discussed, from meaningful assessment and interventions to social policy and advocacy. Featured topics include: Psychosocial factors influencing children with immune-related health conditions.  Resilience and pediatric cancer survivorship within a cultural context. Promoting resilience in chronically ill children and their families during the transition to adolescence. Creating a context for resilience in medical settings.  Promoting resilience through children's health and social care policy. Child and Adolescent Resilience Within Medical Contexts is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and other professionals, as well as graduate students in child and school psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, social work, pediatrics, medical anthropology, nursing, educational psychology and policy.