Child Life Specialist - Inpatient Pediatric/PICU (30 hrs/wk)

We are recruiting for a mission-driven Child Life Specialist - Inpatient Pediatric/PICU (30 hrs/wk) to join our team!

We're with you for life’s journey. At Denver Health, purpose isn’t just something we believe in—it’s something we live every day, for life’s journey.

Our Values

Respect | Belonging | Accountability | Transparency

Department

Child Life Program

Why This Role Matters

As Colorado’s leading safety-net health system, Denver Health serves a diverse community and provides essential care to those who need it most. In this role, you’ll make a meaningful impact every day—helping children and families cope, heal, and thrive through some of life’s most challenging moments.

What You’ll Do

You’ll support pediatric patients and families by:

• Providing therapeutic and developmental play to reduce stress and anxiety.
• Preparing children for procedures using age-appropriate education.
• Offering family and sibling support during hospitalization.
• Supporting coping through illness, injury, or grief.
• Collaborating closely with care teams to ensure holistic, patient-centered care.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Meaningful impact: Be part of a mission-focused, safety-net environment that truly changes lives.
• Experience: The diversity of experience, range of clinical needs, and cultural and social family backgrounds provides valuable learning, especially for those newer to the career.
• Engagement: The Child Life team is one of the most highly engaged teams at Denver Health!
• Dynamic setting: Be part of a fast-paced pediatric emergency team.
• Career growth: Access strong professional development, education support, and advancement pathways.
• Supportive culture: Collaborate with a multidisciplinary pediatric care team.

Job Summary

The Child Life Specialist I ("Specialist") is is a key member of the pediatric healthcare team. The Specialist, under general supervision, works in a health care setting focusing on the emotional and developmental needs of children and their families.

The Specialist reduces stress associated with the health care experience and enables a child and their family to cope by providing play experiences, presenting medical information in a way that children can understand, and encouraging family involvement in the child's medical care.

The Specialist routinely works in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary healthcare team and other professionals in ambulatory care, emergency care, and inpatient settings.

*** Inpatient Pediatric & Peds ICU: Wednesday to Friday 10:30am-6:30pm

Whole House: Saturday 8am - 4pm.

Essential Functions:

• Clinical Interventions: Develops a plan of care including interventions to address the needs of the child and family.
  • Family and sibling support: Utilizing a family-centered care approach to ensure the patient and family’s individual, cultural, and social needs are met and to provide developmentally appropriate education and support to other children in the family to help them cope with a family member in the hospital.
  • Preparation and procedural support: Provides psychological preparation to children prior to undergoing medical procedures using expressive/medical play and other techniques to minimize stress or fears related to medical procedures.
  • Developmental/Therapeutic play: Uses normative and/or therapeutic play opportunities to encourage expression of feelings, process difficult events, explore positive coping skills, promote a sense of mastery and understanding of health care experiences, and to minimize stress associated with health care experiences.
  ▪ Recognizes the developmental issues specifically related to healthcare experiences.
  • Diagnosis education: Utilizing developmentally appropriate language to explain a new diagnosis, injury, illness, or death.
  • Grief support: Providing memory making and legacy building items, developmentally appropriate education and resources for families, and facilitating bedside visits.
  (50%)
• Communication:
  • Monitors the child’s reaction to hospitalization and provides the staff with timely information to supplement the health care services to the child.
  • Consults with family and staff to ensure clear communication and that the best interests of the patient are consistently met.
  • Provides education regarding the scope of child life services, the impact of health care on development, providing developmentally appropriate and emotionally safe medical care, and professional boundaries.
  (15%)
• Assessment:
  •