Children’s Hospital Amenities and Services

Our Child Life Specialists provide individualized care and support designed to meet the needs of infants, children, and families as they cope with the stress and uncertainty of hospitalization. Our team provides evidence-based, developmentally and physiologically appropriate services with the goal of reducing fear, anxiety, and pain. These services include:

• Educating your child about illness, treatment and procedures. Child Life Specialists utilize pictures, real medical equipment and play medical items to help with increasing familiarity with the hospital environment.
• Supporting your child during stressful experiences and procedures. Our team may use distraction or coping techniques, like deep breathing, to help your child through their procedure.
• Encouraging your child to express feelings about illness and treatment through therapeutic activities.
• Normalizing the environment through developmentally appropriate play and group activities.
• Supporting siblings and other children in the family. Child Life Specialists are available to prepare siblings for a hospital visit or help siblings navigate and express their feelings about having a brother or sister in the hospital.
• Assisting your child with pain management through distraction and relaxation. Our team can collaborate with you and your child to create an individualized plan focused on coping.
• Providing support to families, especially in times of grief and death. This may include providing memory making opportunities for your child and family. Child Life Specialists are also available to provide the help you need to discuss death with other children in your family.

Play Spaces

Child Life Specialists help our patients cope with hospital life and their illnesses by giving them chances to play and interact in our activity centers. All three Children’s locations feature playrooms and activity centers supplied with toys, games and crafts for all ages.

Patients and families at Children’s Scottish Rite Hospital can visit several areas such as The Zone, the Max Brown Family Resource Library, the Art Room and several garden spaces.

Our patients and families at Children’s Egleston Hospital can participate in the exciting world of radio and TV broadcasting and even meet some of the world’s most famous musicians and actors at Seacrest Studios, the first broadcast media center ever opened by the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. Areas such as the Family Library, garden spaces and the Art Room are also available to patients and families.

Student Opportunities

Children’s Child Life team offers a variety of professional educational opportunities for aspiring child life professionals. Please see below for additional information.

• Child Life Practicum
• Child Life Internship
• Child Life’s Beyond the Classroom Seminar

For questions about our student programs, please email us at ChildLifeStudents@choa.org.

They provide spiritual support and guidance to patients and families as they seek healing, meaning and hope in the face of illness or injury.

Chaplains share their responsibilities by rotating roles throughout the week to make sure someone is available for spiritual support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

They make rounds with caregivers, sit quietly at a patient’s bedside or respond to traumas in our three Emergency Departments. They also perform interfaith worship services in the hospital chapels at Egleston, Hughes Spalding and Scottish Rite hospitals.

Support at profound times

Chaplains are often called upon to be with families in their moments of greatest joy and deepest sadness. They celebrate baptisms, blessings, recoveries and birthdays with families. They provide bereavement support, conduct funerals and memorial services, and may help families talk through the delicate subject of organ, tissue and eye donation.

When to call a chaplain

Our chaplains are here to help. Consider calling a chaplain when you:

• Need assistance contacting your clergy or representative of your faith tradition.
• Are struggling to make sense out of what is happening.
• Need a Bible or religious literature.
• Need prayer or other religious rituals, such as anointing, baptism, infant dedication, communion or other ritual unique to your faith tradition.
• Are facing a new diagnosis, surgery or a significant change in the plan of care.
• Feel isolated or lonely.
• Are facing ethical decisions.
• Are grieving a loss or death.

Clinical Pastoral Education Program

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is interfaith professional education for those interested in providing spiritual care to patients, families and staff in a clinical setting. Learn more about our Clinical Pastoral Education program.

Located in Egleston, Hughes Spalding and Scottish Rite, our Family Libraries contain a wealth of consumer health information and recreational reading materials. All of our services are free. In addition, we provide communication assistance and recreational materials like puzzles, books, board games and more for our patients and their families.

What we offer

Educational materials

• Consumer health books
• Customized medical information searches
• Models and charts of the human body
• Reference materials
• Spanish materials
• More than 2,000 consumer health books, videos and DVDs

Communication services

• Computers with internet access and word processing capabilities
• Copier, fax machine, notary and printers
• Digital camera checkout (inpatient use only)
• A laptop program that provides laptops to patients and families for checkout after a seven-day hospital stay (Egleston only)

You can add to what you learn in our Family Libraries by consulting MedlinePlus, the National Institutes of Health’s website that offers reliable, up-to-date health information about diseases, conditions and wellness issues in easy-to-understand language.

Children’s has a highly qualified, certified team of interpreters and translators who work with doctors, nurses, family service personnel and other healthcare team members. These specialists serve as advocates for our patients and their families and help them with:

• Diagnosis
• Discharge
• Treatment plans
• Medical consent forms
• Other communication needs

Services include:

• Spanish and other foreign language interpreters
• Phone interpreters
• Sign language interpreters
• Written translations
• Cultural resource support

We also use Pacific Interpreters, a telephone service that is available 24 hours a day and provides interpretation in more than 150 different languages.

Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music to address non-musical goals within a therapeutic relationship. Our music therapists are licensed, board-certified professionals who have completed an approved music therapy degree program and clinical internship. Music therapy sessions are individualized to address physical, emotional, and psychosocial goals through therapeutic music experiences. At Children’s, our music therapists are unit-specific and operate on a consult-basis. Music therapy is currently available to the following inpatient units:

Egleston

• Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU)
• Technology-dependent Intensive Care Unit (TICU)
• Cardiology
• Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU)
• Cardiac Acute Care Unit (CACU)
• Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center
• Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT)
• Hematology
• Oncology

Scottish Rite

• Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU)
• Technology-dependent Intensive Care Unit (TICU)
• Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
• Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center
• Hematology
• Oncology
• Comprehensive Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit (CIRU)

Hughes Spalding

• All areas (as needed)

If you feel that your child may benefit from music therapy support, please speak with any member of your care team.

For more information about music therapy, please visit the American Music Therapy Association website or the Certification Board for Music Therapists website.

Learn more about music therapy in the pediatric medical setting.

Learn more about music therapy with premature infants.

Student Opportunities

Children’s Music Therapy is pleased to foster student learning for music therapy students attending an accredited university through practicum and internship opportunities.

• Children’s holds National Roster Internship Site status through the American Music Therapy Association. Learn more information about our internship program.
• To inquire about practicum placement, please email Cassi Crouse, Music Therapy Team Lead, at cassi.crouse@choa.org.

Contact Us

Social workers at Children’s are essential members of each child’s healthcare team. They use their skills in assessment and intervention to provide our families with counseling, education and resources to enhance their ability to cope with illness or injury.

Our social workers can:

• Support you and your family as you learn to cope with your child’s illness or injury.
• Give you support during times of grief and loss.
• Address language and cultural concerns.
• Plan patient care conferences between your family and the medical team.
• Discuss any concerns about your child’s safety and protection.
• Plan for your child’s discharge from the hospital.
• Find resources to help pay for your child’s medicines.
• Arrange transportation to and from the hospital.
• Teach you about community agencies that provide ongoing services for financial, insurance, legal, mental health and other needs.
• Provide information about advance directives, which allow patients 18 years and older to make valid, legal choices about their future medical care.

Learn more about our social workers and search available resources.