Child Life Wild Life
Jessica Lewin, CCLS & The Child Life Mentor, sits down with Certified Child Life Specialists, students, and professionals to talk about topics surrounding the field of child life. Come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills, protect your mental health, and glean inspiration, hope, and ideas. I'm so happy you're here!
Child Life Wild Life
The Wild Life of Child Life in the Camp Setting with Allison Messerly
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Certified Child Life Specialist, Jessica Lewin, talks with friend and CCLS, Allison Messerly, about taking child life to camp!
What happens when you take a child life specialist out of the hospital and place them in a summer camp setting for kids with cancer? Magic, advocacy, and a whole new world of psychological support.
Allison Messerly shares her journey from hospital-based child life to creating a comprehensive support system at a day camp for children with cancer and their siblings. Throughout this deeply insightful conversation, Allison reveals how she's adapted traditional clinical skills to serve children who are either undergoing active cancer treatment or within five years of completing it as well as their siblings.
The camp serves as crucial respite for families financially devastated by cancer treatment costs. For many young campers, this represents their first experience outside the home after diagnosis — a significant transition requiring specialized support. Allison employs diagnosis education not just with children but extensively with teenage staff who may never have worked with medically complex kids before.
Most fascinating is how seamlessly child life skills transfer to this non-traditional setting. From advocating for children with ports to participate safely in gymnastics to creating therapeutic activities that help process emotions, Allison demonstrates that the core expertise remains valuable across environments. Perhaps most touching is her work creating memory books for families who lose children between camp seasons, capturing precious moments parents might never have witnessed during treatment-focused years.
Beyond her direct work with campers, Allison has pioneered a formal child life practicum program that combines counselor responsibilities with supervised skill development. Her students have achieved remarkable success, all securing their next educational opportunity immediately after completing her program.
Ready to expand your view of where child life skills can make an impact? This episode will inspire you to think beyond hospital walls and consider how your expertise might transform children's experiences in entirely new settings.
You can follow Allison on Instagram at @aurora__allison.
Track: Odessa — LiQWYD & Scandinavianz [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusWatch: https://youtu.be/jNy-Dp3lgcgFree Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/odessa
The Camp Mom Philosophy
Speaker 1Years ago someone at camp , one of our camp counselors , started calling me the quote unquote camp mom and I loved that and I've always just like really taken that to heart because you know there's a role for a director and there's a role for counselors and unit heads and all these different pieces and elements of camp that are so important . But I love the idea that I'm just kind of the safe space that people get to land , whether it's the campers or the staff .
Speaker 2They know that they can come to me with any dumb thing or anything that they're frustrated about and , I'll you know , validate their feelings and also help them work through it in a productive way . Welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast , a platform dedicated to sharing the honest ins and outs and vulnerable truths about the child life profession . With your host , jessica Luen , come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills , protect your mental health and glean inspiration , hope and ideas from fellow certified child life specialists , students and professionals .
Speaker 3Hello and welcome to the Child Life Wildlife podcast . Today I have on Allison Messerly . She is a child life specialist who has been working in a camp setting working directly with children with cancer and their siblings for almost six years . She comes with a wealth of knowledge in regards to what this looks like in a camp setting and , as this was a very requested podcast episode , I wanted to make sure to bring somebody who had a lot of experience and who was doing this full time . You will not be disappointed with all that she brings to the table . I am really , really excited for this conversation , and I hope that you are too .
Speaker 3So , without further ado , here is my conversation with Allison Messerly on bringing child life to camp . Hi , allison , thank you so much for being on the Child Life Wildlife podcast . Hi , jessica , it's so nice to be here . I'm excited . This is a conversation that I have been looking forward to , because I know that this is an area where child life specialists are trying to dip their toes in , and so , before we get started on this conversation , I'd love to take a second and get to know you a little bit better . So anything you'd like to share with me and my listeners who you are your child , life journey , fun facts , anything that you'd like for us to know .
Speaker 1Yeah , awesome . So , like you said , my name is Allison . I have been a
Introduction to Child Life in Camp
Speaker 1certified child life specialist since 2018 . So I did my undergrad at a large university in the southeast and really kind of found child life through an organization called Dance Marathon . So it was a club at my college that I feel like a lot of people are probably familiar with that works with the children's hospitals and , you know , serves the families .
Speaker 1And I met a family that was going through treatment at our local hospital at the time and , you know , was just really impacted by the teenager's experience , but more so , even almost by his twin brother's experience of this whole kind of journey .
Speaker 1And I just thought it was so interesting that , you know , not only the patient but the twin brother really kept talking about this thing called a child life specialist and you know what they did for their family and just kind of all that impact that they had . So that was kind of my first introduction to it and , you know , at that point I was kind of at a point in my college career where I was far enough in that switching majors would have , you know , been kind of an ordeal . It would have caused me to stay an extra year and so ended up just kind of deciding to explore the master's program route . So I went to a different university after college for my master's degree in child life and really , really loved that experience . It was super cool to get , you know , immersed in with a really small group and this was at the time where the master's program was not yet a requirement . But they were talking about it and then , of course we know , they made it that and then went back on it .
Speaker 1So it was all kind of a mess , but I'm still really glad that we did it and you know I think it was . It was a great way to get into the field .
Speaker 3Yeah , that's awesome . So , before we dive into your experience working in the camp setting , talk a little bit about your prior roles , positions that you held , units you covered anything that you'd like to share about your professional experience .
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely . So I spent the one year of my career , my professional career , in a large freestanding children's hospital . It was the same one that I completed my internship in . So I was offered a position right out of my internship , which was really awesome Because , again , you know , at the time this was pre COVID , so the spots , I think , were really limited in terms of job market .
Speaker 1It was really really tough time to be entering the field in really different ways than it is now , and so I was really fortunate to get that role .
Speaker 1It was a PRN , like
Allison's Journey to Child Life
Speaker 1per diem role for the most part , and then something that my hospital called back fills . So basically what that meant was , because it was a really large hospital , we had team leads who were clinical for like half their time and then were in like a supervisory , like managerial role for half of their time , and so they still had you know , they were still the only child life specialist on whatever unit they were on , but then there were days , two days a week , where they needed to be doing admin work , and so they needed regular coverage for their roles , and so for those three , three or 14 leads kind of depending on the time of the season , I would fill in on their admin days . So it was like not full time but definitely more than PRN and a little bit more stable , which was really interesting . And so during that time I spent most of my time in day surgery . The pediatric ICU , respiratory unit and then oncology was kind of like the main four that I was in and then in my PRN role .
Speaker 1You know , working weekends our hospital took kind of like a house coverage approach , so there were one to two child life specialists on staff on Saturdays and Sundays at maximum , and so you know , you kind of just went wherever you were called , so it was definitely a little bit of trial by fire , but like in the best way , I think , because you know I tell people all the time who are new to this field that like , while it can be frustrating not to have a full time role at the beginning , you will never learn more or faster than you will in that PRN role .
Speaker 1So really really benefited from that and spent a year in that role and then , you know , towards the end of that year it was just getting harder to get steady hours . You know the
Hospital Experience Before Camp
Speaker 1people that had been out were not out as often anymore and you know the city that I live in is larger and cost of living is higher , so it was just becoming really financially like untenable for me to kind of keep doing something that wasn't full time and they just didn't , unfortunately , have anything coming available anytime soon and the area that I'm in this is the only children's hospital , so there wasn't , you know , any other options really , which was really frustrating . And you know I love my husband dearly but we were very tied to the city that we live in and we're just kind of stuck here and so , yeah , that made it tricky . So it was just kind of like , okay , what else is out there , and so , yeah , that's kind of how I ended up where I am now .
Speaker 3Yeah , wow , I have not heard of that . Where did you call it backfill ?
Speaker 1Yeah . I don't know if they yeah , backfill they . I don't know where exactly they got the term . I think you know the idea is just like when they're not there , we're filling in yeah it was definitely a different dynamic . There was a lot of things that were great about it , but there were definitely challenges , I think , with regularly filling in on someone else's unit .
Speaker 1But like while they were still there , and while they're still , you know , they might see the patient one day , and then the next day it's me , and then it's back to them , and so there's just . Everybody does child life a little bit differently , and so it can be a challenge .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , that's very , very interesting . Moving into your current role , working with children in the camp setting as a child life specialist , talk to me a little bit about what your day to day looks like and if this position was something that you had to advocate for , or if it was a position that was already ready for . A child life specialist kind of all the behind the scenes of when you first started .
Speaker 1So the organization that I work for is a summer day camp for kids with cancer and their siblings . So we serve children ages three and a half to 16 . So it's a pretty broad age range . And if you think about the camp setting , you know I always tell people that sending a three and a half year old to overnight camp would be insane . We would all be miserable . No one would be successful the kids , the family , the staff . It would just be crazy .
Speaker 1But the great thing about our format is that day camp is much more appropriate for that age , and so you know it's awesome and it's such a respite for these families that are really , you know , in the thick of treatment and even beyond treatment . When you know their financials are just so decimated . You can't afford to send your kids to camp for the entire summer . You know . You just don't have a lot of those options that a healthy family might have . And so we take kids who are in active treatment all the way up through about five years post completion of treatment .
Speaker 1And you know , something I tell people often when I think about , like , the child life portion of this job is that this is so often our kids first experience out of the home . So , like a three and a half year old has maybe not been to preschool yet . If they were diagnosed at two , or you know their siblings were diagnosed , whatever it might be , and it's it's a hard transition to just suddenly go from being under your parents wing , 24 , seven and really spending all that time with adults , only to now suddenly being in these really large peer groups of you know , 30 other kids your age and you're overwhelmed and nap time's gone and you don't know what the schedule is or when you're going to eat next . It's a lot to cope with and I mean camp is a great thing , right , so it's positive that we're coping with these changes , but it is change nonetheless for these kids . So , yeah , so my day to day depends a lot on , like , the season of the year that we're in .
Speaker 1So obviously during camp season looks really different than like right now , during October , for example .
Speaker 1So , in the kind of off season . My day to day is a lot of the typical like nonprofit stuff , so not as child life heavy in the day to day year round . But I am the primary family liaison for our team . So we have , about , you know , 150 families currently involved with our program and I'm the person that keeps up with them all year , that checks in on them , that sees . You know , are you guys experiencing an unexpected hospitalization right now ? If so , can I come visit you and just kind of give you an hour break , bring you breakfast , whatever that might be ?
Speaker 1So really stewarding those family relationships and just kind of keeping up with , you know , all the different health developments and then even things outside of their cancer diagnosis . You know we really get enmeshed with these families lives in a great way and so it's a lot of checking in with them and just spending good quality time with the families throughout the year and then otherwise it's a lot of . You know , I mentioned to you previously that we do some development and fundraising . So we're entirely donor funded , which means that you know , with a really small team like we have , we all kind of pitch into that . So I do a lot with our fundraising events and then once we hit like January time , it really switches to be more camp focused . So I help a lot with our hiring process , from interviewing our staff to selecting them . I help a lot with getting families enrolled in camp . I'm also in the hospital setting actually twice a week , you know , visiting with families , promoting camp to them and kind of trying to get them interested , you know , just letting them meet somebody that's going to be at camp and kind of giving the parents and the kids that feeling of ease of like , okay , we know this girl , we trust her . You know we could probably do this , because sending your kids off to camp is hard enough , and then sending your sick kids off to camp is a whole different challenge
Day-to-Day Role in Camp Setting
Speaker 1. And so I just spend a lot of quality time with the families in the hospital on the phone , just like getting to know them and kind of helping ease their concerns about sending their kids to camp , and then , similarly , with the staff .
Speaker 1You know we hire kids starting at age 16 to work at camp , which is wonderful . But a lot of them it's their first job and even if it's not their first job , it may be their first time working with kids . Or maybe , you know , it may be their first time working with sick kids , which is totally different than working with healthy kids and totally the same in a lot of ways that they come to find to , as we know . But you know it comes with definitely some challenges and fears for a lot of these young staff , and so I spend a lot of time talking to them about what to expect and what not to expect and you know what concerns they might have and just kind of helping them get comfortable with that role that they're going to take on .
Speaker 1And then , as we get closer and closer to camp season I start participating in our staff training , which is really one of my favorite elements , I think , of what I do is getting to you know it's a lot of using my diagnosis education skills .
Speaker 1I'm not necessarily educating a patient on their cancer diagnosis , but I'm still working with high school kids and I'm still providing education on pediatric oncology and what treatment looks like and the side effects , the psychological elements that they can expect to see with these kids .
Speaker 1All that same stuff that we teach about in the hospital setting and child life is relevant here .
Speaker 1So I really love getting to use that kind of education portion of things with our staff and just kind of getting them used to you know what their day-to is going to look like and providing support for the concerns that they have , because you know we do have kids come to camp one year that won't be back the next year and you know we try really hard with our staff not to necessarily tell them , unless they have to know which kids are the children with cancer and which kids are the siblings , which is something that I really love about what we do and I think it's really special because it ensures that everybody gets treated like a rock star , no matter what .
Speaker 1And you know these siblings have been likely left out of a lot of things for a long time , with their brother or sister going through treatment , and you know they deserve to be the star of the show too , and so you know we tell our staff . Obviously , sometimes you're going to be able to tell by looking at the kids which one is the patient but , not always , and especially with some of our kids that are further out of treatment .
Speaker 1So I really love just like coaching our staff and then my day to day during the camp season again is a lot of staff support because you know kids will say really off the cuff stuff . So like we don't , you know , I always say we're not like therapeutic quote unquote therapeutic cancer camp necessarily , in the sense that you know our programming isn't designed to talk about cancer and to focus on that . If the kids bring it up we're fully equipped to handle that and , you know , have those conversations . But our goal is really just to be a typical camp environment that is medically equipped to handle these kids and so we don't spend a lot of time focusing on cancer . But also some of these kids will walk up to you on the very first day off the bus and stick their hand out and say hi , I'm Johnny and I have leukemia , and that's the first thing out of their mouth , you know .
Speaker 1So , and that can be really jarring for the 17 year old staff member on the receiving end of that . So I do a lot of support for our staff , also a lot of camper behavior support and coping support . You know , as we said , not everybody's been to camp before , so that can be challenging . Even the kids that have been to school especially post pandemic , we're finding , are just not as socialized as you might typically expect for their ages and so they struggle a little bit more in these big group settings to get along and to wait their turn and a lot of the skills that you think are kind of , you know , typical for a certain development stage we're finding are happening later and later with these kids , and so I do just a lot of very typical like normative coping support .
Speaker 1I do also facilitate the therapeutic activities that we do have . So , for example , with our teens , you know , we do something that we've started calling spill the tea , which is such a silly name , but it's basically just like a regular therapeutic group activity , so something that you might see in the hospital setting with a team group or whatever . So I will , you know , play therapeutic Jenga with them or a lot of the typical therapeutic games that you'll see in the hospital setting . We're bringing these to camp and a it's giving these kids an opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better and be . You know , a lot of times when you think of camp you see all the high energy stuff and you don't necessarily get the relaxed and kind of more deep , introspective stuff , and a lot of our kids really need that opportunity .
Speaker 1So I facilitate our therapeutic group activities and then I work . I would say really the last big thing that I do day to day during the summer is just really helping our staff learn how to adapt activities for the different physical and developmental disabilities that we see at camp . We see a lot of kids with Down syndrome , with autism , at our camp . We see a lot of kids that are hard of hearing or completely deaf . We see limb deficiencies . We see , you know , kids with brain tumors that may have balance issues or reflex problems that make it challenging for them to participate in sports in the typical ways and things like that . And so we have a specialist that teaches each of our activities .
Speaker 1But you know , just because they're a specialist in sports doesn't necessarily mean that they're a specialist in adaptive sports , and so I spend a lot of time with our staff helping go through their lesson plans and just making sure that you know they feel equipped to adapt an activity on the fly to whoever walks in , so that's kind of what it looks like , but as I think with all child life jobs , it is incredibly variable by the day . You know . It just kind of depends on what walks up to you .
Speaker 3Oh yeah , definitely . You did such a beautiful job of explaining all of that , like I feel like I know . I know exactly what you do now . Did you did you answer the piece of ? Did you have to advocate for this role and is your role act like a child life specialist at the camp , or is it called something else ?
Speaker 1that's a great question and I did not answer that okay so I am called a child life specialist during the summer at camp . Okay , the rest of the year I think we go with the title of operations manager and family liaison just to try and encompass , you know , a little bit more of that nonprofit jargon and all the other kind of elements that come along with it . But during the camp season the families know that I'm a child life specialist , the staff knows that , the hospital knows that I'm there , so very much a child life role at camp . This was not originally listed or like pitched as a child life role though , which I think is really interesting . So you know , I mentioned that I came from my hospital setting into this job and while I was on the oncology unit in my internship and then eventually in that backfill position that we talked about earlier , it actually was the semester leading up to the first summer of this camp existing in our area , and so the camp director and the executive director , who I have worked with ever since , came actually and presented at family rounds one morning to us , and we're just , you know , talking about hey , this is who we are , this is what we're bringing to the area . You know , we hope you'll refer your families .
Speaker 1And so a year later , when I saw you know their name listed on a job search platform , I was like , oh , okay , wait , I remember these people , like I remember talking to them and I really liked what they stood for . So they were looking for someone to fill , you know , their , their family liaison role , and I think that they were so new to the area that they didn't fully know what they wanted that to look like yet . And the really thing was that they were
Adapting Child Life Skills to Camp
Speaker 1really upfront about being really open to molding the role to the skills of whoever took the role . And so when I came in and was able to say , you know , hey , I am a child life specialist and I think my background would be really , really useful to you guys , and here's why they were really excited about it .
Speaker 1And I think that if I ever was to move on from this role , I think that going forward they would look for a child life specialist specifically , because I think they've come to see , you know , over the last six years , the value of having this person in this space and , you know , not only for being able to really connect with and understand families and support the staff , but also , just from you know , a recruitment perspective .
Speaker 1I think families really like to see that that's someone that's on staff and you know , once they've gotten comfortable with child life in the hospital , they they're really excited to see that it's available other places . And so you know , my team had a lot of experience in the nonprofit industry and in the camping industry , but nobody had any medical experience prior to them hiring me onto the team and I think that's been just a really critical addition for them . So I think that you know I advocated for it to some extent . The position itself was already there , but I think I was able to kind of take it and say here's what more can be brought to the table here .
Speaker 3That is really cool . I just feel like based on the camp being a liaison for families who are struggling with this diagnosis . The medical piece is so critical , so that is so great that your position was able to fill that . That's awesome . Do you remember like how you were feeling or thinking when they came and presented at family rounds , like did that pique your interest at all , or were you still like pretty engrossed in your current role as a hospital child life specialist ? I'm just curious .
Speaker 1Yeah , at the time it was actually still during my internship . So I was still very much thinking kind of like narrow mindedly for lack of a better term about what child life could be , and so I very much still have my sights set on hospital at the time . But I did grow up in the camping industry . I was a day camp kid through and through as a child and I worked at a camp forever , and so it definitely piqued my interest from that standpoint of things .
Speaker 1But I think at the time it was just kind of like , wow , this is a really awesome thing and I'm glad that the community will have this , rather than like , oh , this is somewhere that you know , I could see myself ending up one day .
Speaker 3Yeah , so cool the way that your stories like just like plop you where you're supposed to be , you know , and it all makes sense . So I'd love to talk a little bit more about the transferable skills , if you can actually like name those for people , because I know that child life specialists who leave the field , or maybe , like you , it's almost like one foot out because you're half the year as a child life specialist , half the year is this family liaison . So what are those transferable skills look like ?
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , absolutely so . You know , like I said , I use the diagnosis education element of my skills constantly . Even you know , I think I use it the most with staff during training , but even I find using it sometimes with the families and the kids kind of on the fly , where you know , most of our kids at camp are largely accustomed to what pediatric cancer looks like because they've seen their siblings go through it . But you know , if they were considerably younger and their sibling had it , you know , five years ago or something like that , they may not always know or remember what to expect . And so sometimes you know kids are kids and sometimes they make fun of things that are different from them or that they don't expect . And so I definitely do some diagnosis education on the fly . You know very high level stuff , but just to remind our kids at camp of you know how , what our values are and appropriate behaviors and what things we don't say to our friends and things like that . So very much use the diagnosis education skill .
Speaker 1The child development piece of it obviously can't be overstated .
Speaker 1I think that's , you know , one of the most transferable skills and one of the things that gets talked about so much as people are looking to exit the traditional child life field .
Speaker 1But you know , knowing the ages and stages as silly as it sounds and as much as you know , you kind of get that drilled into your head from a textbook and then you think how's this really going to matter in real life ?
Speaker 1But it does so very much . That's absolutely something that I use constantly again with educating our staff because they get assigned to certain age groups and if you've never worked with a three and a half year old before but you've worked with a five year old , you know it's important to know how those ages are going to be really different and also how a typically developing three and a half year old and a three and a half year old that's , you know , spent half their life in a hospital are going to be different too . So , very much all of my child development skills , a lot of my advocacy skills for myself but also for my campers . A lot of times we'll find that parents , I , I I never know how to phrase this because I don't love the term like helicopter parent , because I feel like it comes with this really negative connotation , but I mean sometimes it's kind of accurate , right .
Speaker 1I think that naturally , families who have gone through this medical trauma of pediatric cancer are going to be more wary about letting their kids try new things . And you know we work really closely with our medical directors and our nursing team to know what is safe for these kids and what's not , and they really help guide us and so we're really confident , you know , that what we're providing is a safe space for these kids . So sometimes I have to advocate to parents and say , hey , you know , I know that you're nervous about your kid trying gymnastics because they have a port , but here are the three protocols that we keep in place to keep your kids safe with their port . And you know , ultimately we leave it up to the kids . So if they're uncomfortable , we're never going to make them do something they don't want to , but we are going to encourage them to try new things and kind of , you know , scaffold their skills in that way and and let the parents , you know , have the opportunity to kind of say , okay , like I can let loose a little bit here and let my kids try these new things , and also advocating for our kids , you know , within our staff as well , because again a 17 year old is going to see a central line hanging out of a kid's chest and immediately think of all the things that the kid can't do and all the things that they should be nervous about .
Speaker 1And while that's great and I'm glad that they care about keeping our kids safe , I think it's my job in a lot of spaces to say here's what we can do to make sure that they're safe , while also making sure that they get the full experience and can participate the same way . So the advocacy piece is very much still there and in addition to , you know , advocating for my role and the value of being there and gosh so many transferable skills , I really feel like most of what I do in my day to day at camp is just the same as what I did in that year of being in the hospital , you know day to day at camp is just the same as what I did in that year of being in the hospital .
Speaker 1You know it's prioritization is so very much a skill in the summer , but also all year with nonprofit , because we are a really small team and so we do have to really work hard to prioritize . You know what comes first and what is most important and what can kind of wait , things like that . So that's very much something that I'm doing day to day . You know we don't necessarily chart at camp but we do take those same skills to pass notes on to our staff from year to year , because you know the unit head for our three and a half to four year olds this year may not be the same person that comes back next year and we want that person , to you know , be set up for success and know hey , you know Joey sometimes had trouble with following instructions but a countdown really helps , right ?
Speaker 1So we have all these coping strategies that we already know work for Joey .
Speaker 1Why reinvent the wheel . So we do a lot of , you know , kind of quote unquote charting , in that sense of just making sure that that information is transferred from year to year . And then you know , coping plans , coping activities . I do so much deep breathing with these kids at camp , and even with the staff , that you almost would not believe I will literally sit there and walk them through the same deep breathing exercises that I would use with a kid in a procedure in the hospital , and it works the same no matter where you are . It's such a transferable skill set .
Speaker 1And you know , like I said , I implement therapeutic activities with the kids at camp and even , you know , in my day to day , year round , where I'm in the hospital twice a week providing some volunteer programming . You know , it's not in the scope of I'm not wearing my child life specialist hat at that point , because our hospital is wonderful and they have a child life team but I'm still very much wearing my child life hat when I come up with the programs that we're going to do in those activities . And so you know , even without having set therapeutic goals , I can still present a therapeutic activity that gives these kids an opportunity to express themselves without having to do it . You know from the medical setting and things like that . So I mean , it really goes on and on .
Speaker 1I do legacy building things with our families , but our art activities at camp , for example , are take-home things , you know , that represent growth and milestones and things that these kids might have missed out on in their schooling Because you know , when you're being treated for a year you can't necessarily go to school every day and so you might miss those handprint turkeys that happen around Thanksgiving and all the kind of silly things that you know we take for granted . But parents really love and they really value those things . So we do a lot of that stuff . It doesn't happen often , but we do have campers that will pass away from year over year and I work with their families , you know to provide support .
Speaker 1We attend funerals when it's appropriate . We provide one of my favorite you know favorite is kind of a strange word , but one of my most meaningful jobs , I think , within my role is that when a child passes away , I spend a lot of time collecting , you know , notes from staff members that knew the child really well and special photos and videos , and I put together this really beautiful memory book for this family that you know they may have never gotten to see their kid do yoga in their lifetime because that might not have been something that was a priority while they were in and out of the hospital for treatment , but at camp they got to
The Camp Practicum Program
Speaker 1do yoga and so I get to give these families these memories that they might not have had otherwise . So a lot of the bereavement and legacy building stuff really rolls over to and I mean truly any element you could think of to ask me about from the hospital setting I could . I could tell you that is really cool .
Speaker 3That is , that's very , very cool . It sounds like , yeah , everything you were doing in the hospital , just in the camp setting , which , and the book too . It's like that's something you don't have in the hospital , where we probably don't see patients for that long , but to be able to do that and get notes and stuff , that's really beautiful . I would love to know a little bit about your child life practicum , which you haven't mentioned , but you did mention in an email , and so I'm very curious to know what does that look like ?
Speaker 1in the camp , setting hours , things that the practicum student gets to do , anything like that yeah , absolutely . This was definitely my passion project in recent years , I would say , and one of the things that you know when they hired me for this role six years ago , they didn't know what child life was , so they had no idea what the steps that students have to go through to get certified are , or just the struggle that we have all been through to get to where we are and that your students that you're listening are going through right now . And so I have spent , you know , the first couple years of working in this job educating my team about what the child life certification process really looks like . And so , over time , you know , I kind of was able to tell them that , like , hey , we , you know , are recruiting our staff from all of these different areas . We're going to , you know , clubs for people that are interested in becoming nurses or doctors or whatever . But you know , we also need to be looking for people that are on this child life path because they have these great skill sets that would be so valuable in camp . And it's a win win Right , it's great experience for them , but it's also incredibly valuable , you know , staff that have their hearts in the right place and have the right skill set to really succeed in camp . And so I kind of started teaching my team about what a practicum was and what that experience looked like . And then , of course , a year or two ago , they changed all the terminology around that . So forgive me that I'm using the old school terms , but you get the idea , yeah , but yeah , so our child life practicum is something that I developed entirely by myself .
Speaker 1I worked in collaboration with child life specialists that work at other camps across the Southeast and I just kind of started reaching out to people and said hey , you know , I've been kind of casually mentoring child life students through our camp role for a while , but I really want to find a way to formalize this . You know , do you guys have a practicum ? What does that look like ? And so just kind of did research and spoke with some other camps that had it , and so we started it for the first time formally in 2023 . So this year was my second summer having it . The first year I had two students just to kind of get my feet wet and figure out like what was manageable for me , and this year I had four and I don't think we will ever go beyond four unless there's a second child life specialist , because that was a lot of work . I can be honest with the sweet spots probably three .
Speaker 1But it is essentially an add on to the camp counselor experience . So basically , students have to go through the process of being hired as a camp counselor first and then , once they've been hired as a camp counselor , they can express interest in the Child Life Practicum and then I will select my students from there . And so you know , this year the bulk of the students three out of the four students came from my undergrad alma mater , where I still have some connections in the Child Life department . So I went and spoke to their classes a couple of times last year and just kind of said , hey , this is the thing we're starting and you know I'd love to talk to you guys more about it if you're interested kind of presented a lot of what I just talked about here and , you know , made the case that child life in the camp setting is valuable for your student journey for sure .
Speaker 1And then this year , you know , I formalized everything . So I had a skills checklist for them that went through . You know , all the same skills that are required for internship readiness these days . And I went through every single element of that and was able to say , okay , you know , this is the question about . You know , what do we do that is therapeutic , at camp or whatever the different KSIs are . And so I was able to kind of write up a whole document that I shared with our university partners and just kind of said you know , this is how we plan to meet these goals .
Speaker 1And I had a skills checklist that had , you know , a breakdown of everything that I hoped that they would learn throughout the course of the summer , and it was all of those transferable skills that we just talked about .
Speaker 1And we had weekly check in meetings and then I supervised them throughout their summer experience . So they were assigned to a unit like a normal camp counselor and they went through their day like a normal camp counselor would , and then once a week we met up to just kind of debrief the experiences that they were having and go down the skills checklist and see , okay , this week I saw legacy building and , you know , this week I saw a great example of coping strategies , practicing therapeutic breathing , whatever it was , and so we were able to kind of go through the list and check things off for them throughout the summer and then at the end of the summer we had an extra long meeting . That was just kind of like okay , what do you feel like we didn't check off from the skills checklist ? Now let's role play it right . So , like procedure preparation is not a thing you're going to see in the camp setting , but I can role play and I can teach you how I would prepare a kid for an IV .
Speaker 1So you're still getting that experience regardless . So really worked hard to you know , cover all of those elements . And I do tell my students , too that you know , depending on what their background and their experience looks like , I still recommend a hospital practicum in conjunction with this . Nine times out of 10 , I'm going to tell them that you know that should be their next step If they want to go ahead and apply for internship . Awesome , depending on what their background is , they may be ready . But I tell my students that this is just an excellent supplement to make your internship application stand out even more later on , but that I would not typically recommend exchanging this on a one-to-one basis with a hospital-based practicum , just because you know there's a lot to be said for getting into the hospital setting and making sure that that's even an environment that you're comfortable in before you get you know so far down the road , but it's been a really successful program so far .
Speaker 1You know I've implemented practice interview questions . You know every single meeting we're talking about theory application and so anytime they're giving me an example of something that they saw that happened , I'm challenging them to tell me what theorists they would tie that in with or what developmental agents stage . It's representative of all the things that are really hopefully really preparing them for their future interviews . And then you know resume application assistance all that good stuff is a part of it . So I tell them you know , once you've gone through my practicum summer , I'm at your disposal , I'm here to be the support that I can be through whichever round of applications that you're in and things like that . And so far it's been really successful . Everyone that's come through our child life practicum up to this point I'm really happy to be able to say , has gone on to get whatever they were applying for in the cycle immediately after their practice .
Speaker 1So , whether it was another practicum or straight into internship , everyone's been successful in their semester after spending the summer with us , so it's been really awesome .
Speaker 3That's awesome . I love the idea of even just role playing certain things that they don't get to see . I think that's something that hospitals sometimes miss out on because it's kind of like , oh well , that didn't happen during your four weeks that you were with us or you know 16 weeks that you were here . It didn't come up but like , and they might just kind of skim past that . So I even like that you're doing that outside of the clinical setting , you know , in the community . That's cool .
Speaker 1Yeah , definitely , I think . You know , I think I think they all kind of come into it with like they're excited to have a child life experience . And you know , so far I think people have come into it with kind of the mentality of like I'm excited about this , but I also don't totally , maybe totally buy into how relevant it is or how transferable it is . And then you can see , within like the first two weeks of their camp experience , that you can kind of see the light bulbs going off and they're like oh , okay , I get it , like I understand how this is now going to give me things to talk about in my future internships . And you know I talked to them about like making sure that when something happens you jot it down that day because , six months from now when you're in an internship interview .
Speaker 1You've probably forgotten the nitty gritty , but if you've written down the scenario , you know it gives you something to really be able to go back and reflect on . And yeah , I don't know , I love being able to give them kind of the tips , that some of the things that I was given back when I was a student , and then also some of the things that immediately after coming out of a student , I was like whoa , I really missed out on that and that would have really been helpful .
Speaker 3So yeah , yeah , very , very cool . Okay , this next question is more targeted on
Challenges and Rewards
Speaker 3, like , the highs and your lows . So what has been the best part of this unique position and what has been unexpected aspect that you haven't quite prepared yourself for ?
Speaker 1I am the person that always likes to start with the low , because I like to end on the high , so I'm going to flip it . I think that one thing that I don't know if it was unexpected necessarily , as much as it was just like a more challenging transition for me , I really do miss the clinical setting .
Speaker 1I love what I do and there's so so so much transfer . But one of my favorite parts about child life in the hospital setting was the procedure support and the procedure preparation and those are things that you know nine times out of 10 are not happening in the setting that I'm working in these days , and so that's been a hard adjustment and I found , you know , ways to still use those skill sets that fulfill it to some extent . But that was , you know , kind of the part of the chaos of the hospital that I really enjoyed . So I do miss out on that a little bit , but I do sometimes get to support for , you know , covid tests , ambulance rides , things like that in the camp setting . So there are definitely elements of it , it's just not as frequent .
Speaker 1So , that's a little bit , you know , of an adjustment , and I also think that I , you know , we talk so much about professional boundaries in the child life sphere , and they're so critical to your well-being , to your ability to do your job well , and all that remains true in this space . But a unique aspect of this role is that it is centered around having that ongoing relationship with the families , and so that's an important part of the value of my job , and so , while I love that and I'm so , so honored to do that , you know it does give you an opportunity to get closer with some of these families than you likely would in just a traditional hospital setting , and so like for example , there's a family right now who's been very near and dear to my heart for a couple of years now , and you know you're not supposed to have favorites , but everybody does to some
Speaker 1extent and this is just one of my sweet favorite families that the child has relapsed again and they are , you know , kind of out of options at this point . So he's just recently made the decision that he doesn't want to do any more chemo because he's old enough to make that decision . And these are kind of elements where if I was his hospital child life specialist , I wouldn't necessarily know as much as I do or be kind of as ingrained and enmeshed with the family as I am and it's so wonderful to be able to be there to support them . But it is definitely a challenge emotionally to be more invested with these families . So yeah , that part's definitely hard .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 1And then , in terms of the happy part , the best thing that I love is kind of the flip side of that . It's definitely forming close relationships with those families that I am allowed to maintain over time and in fact I'm encouraged to do so and I love that I get the opportunity to provide support for these families for other aspects of their lives too . It doesn't all have to center around their pediatric oncology diagnosis , right , like . Sometimes transitioning into middle school is a big jump and I get to support these kids in that . That has nothing to do with the medical setting . Or you know , they're 10 years old and suddenly you know mom and their stepdad are having a new baby and that's a big transition . And so I love that I get to support these families in other areas and really be a part of their big wins in life too . You know , there's nothing like when a family invites me to come to the hospital for their child's bell ringing for a camp kid . It's just that will always be the highlight of my job .
Speaker 1And and then , of course , supporting all of the future child life specialists on their journeys too and just being a mentor to them and to all of our staff . You know , years ago someone at camp , one of our camp counselors , started calling me the quote unquote camp mom and I loved that and I've always just like really taken that to heart because you know there's a role for a director and there's a role for counselors and unit heads and all these different pieces and elements of camp that are so important . But I love the idea that I'm just kind of the safe space that people get to land , whether it's the campers or the staff . They know that they can come to me with any dumb thing or anything that they're frustrated about and I'll , you know , validate their feelings and also help them work through it in a productive way .
Speaker 1And so I love being for all of these people .
Speaker 3Oh , I love that . That's very cool . Well , I think we're ready to head into the closing questions that I ask everyone . So the first one is , if someone's listening today and they are really resonating with what you're saying about taking child life into the camp , setting what is a tangible action step that they could take to help get them on the right path ?
Speaker 1I think if you're interested in child life in the camp setting , the first thing I could encourage you to do is sign up to work a summer , even just a week , at your local summer camp . It doesn't have to be a medical camp , it doesn't have to be you know anything that has a child life specialist on staff . But camp is incredible and I love it so much . But I always say , like I'm not an overnight camp girly , like I am not cut out for that life , and I know that about myself and not everybody's cut out for the day camp life , because it's , you know , seven weeks at a time instead of just one week and things like that . So my best first advice is just to sign up to work at a camp in any capacity and make sure that you like camp first and then go from there .
Speaker 3Yeah , that's great . I do have a lot of students that follow along and listen to this podcast , so what is one thing that you'd say to them as a general tip for moving through this profession ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I think my best two tips , I would say one is just networking with anyone in your area , whether it's camp professionals , or you know child life specialists in your hospital setting or you know even people that work at a preschool , things like that networking with any child care professionals and attending conferences beyond just the child life . You know , the ACLP conference is wonderful , but it's not the only learning opportunity out there for our space . I love camp conferences , obviously because I'm a camp person , but also , you know , even from the child life perspective , there's so much that you can learn in these areas . So broadening your horizons and just kind of thinking outside the box of what we're traditionally told that child life looks like . And you know , similarly , my my child life career did not go the way I expected when I was a student . Like I , I had great success as a student . Honestly , I was really fortunate in that I got my
Career Advice and Final Thoughts
Speaker 1practicum and internship placements on the first try both times , and that's not something that a lot of people can say especially post COVID , it's just getting worse .
Speaker 1But you know , I had a really kind of quote unquote easier student journey and then when I got into the professional world it got harder , which is kind of the opposite , I think , of what we assume a lot of times .
Speaker 1A lot of times we think that you know , the student journey and the getting there is the really tough part and then once you get there it's going to be all sunshine and rainbows and dream job and just . You know , I always try to tell students to just be open minded and don't pigeonhole yourself into only like traditional child life roles in the hospital setting . You know , be okay with things not looking the way you might originally expect them to , because I think we all get set in our ways and we have this goal that we're working on for so long and then it may not always look the way you expect and sometimes it's even better . I think I've been really fortunate with where I ended up . But if you had told me when I was a student that this is where I was going to be at this point in my career , I probably would have rolled my eyes and been a little unhappy about it . So , for sure , being willing to be open , yeah , that's great advice .
Speaker 3And then the last question I have for you is , if child life is a wildlife , what has been the wildest part of your experience so far ?
Speaker 1no-transcript responsibility and just kind of being a team player . So I think the tiny bare bones team element to it has really just been the wildest thing . And even during the summer , you know , I find that , being the child life specialist on staff , a lot of people need me a lot of the time and a lot of times it happens all at once , and so it's really wild to just kind of figure out how to prioritize and , you know , also how to equip other people with the knowledge and the skills that I have in a in an efficient way so that they can be my hands and feet when I'm not able to be there . So I think really that's been the wildest part .
Speaker 3Absolutely . Thank you so much , Allison , for being on this podcast episode . I am excited for the listeners to hear it .
Speaker 1Awesome . Thank you so much , jessica . This was so fun , yay .