Celebrating the gift of play
Have you ever heard of Child Life Therapists? No? Neither had we but they have a very important role in the lives of many families with sick kids. Given Child Life Therapists were part of the inspiration behind us starting Teach Ted, we thought it perfect to kick off our blog by sharing with you a bit more about Child Life Therapy in Australia and how it helped inspire us to start Teach Ted.
Firstly, a little bit about children and play…
If you’ve ever spent time around little ones, you’ll know that they can turn just about anything into a game. This innate ability is what helps them to develop new skills like walking, talking and making music out of just about anything! As they get older it also helps them to find their way in the world – how to engage with people in their community, the complexities of ‘mine’ and ‘theirs’ and just how far they can push their parents’ buttons before they’ll crack…
Play is considered such an important element of childhood development that the Australian Government, in consultation with the early childhood sector and academics, made it the cornerstone of the Early Years Learning Framework. Here’s what they say in their Information for Families Guide.
‘Play is learning
Play is very important for children. Through play babies and young children explore and learn to understand the world around them as they come to communicate, discover, imagine and create.
When children play, they are showing what they have learned and what they are trying to understand. This is why play is one of the foundations of the Early Years Learning Framework.
By using this Framework educators will guide your child’s play by carefully designing learning activities and stimulating indoor and outdoor learning environments.’
So how does this relate to Child Life Therapy?
Well, play has been used to support children going through challenging situations for a long time. You may already have heard of Art Therapy, Music Therapy and Animal Therapy. These are all pretty self-explanatory but what about Child Life Therapy? Although the name is fairly new in Australia, preparation through medical play has been a key element of our major children’s hospitals for many years.
Basically, Child Life Therapists work with children and their families when they are in hospital (and sometimes in the lead up to an admission) to help them prepare for and understand what is going to happen. They have a range of tools and techniques at their disposal and customise their approach to each child. Factors which can influence how a child will respond to their treatment include:
their age (which influences the way they process new information)
the type of procedure/treatment they are to undergo, whether this is a once off or part of an ongoing treatment and the seriousness of any diagnosis
previous experiences with hospitals and medical procedures
their own disposition, internal resilience or any developmental, cognitive or physical challenges they may have
how their parents or caregivers feel about the situation (children often look to their parents for cues on how they are expected to react to a new situation)
Child Life Therapists use books, toys, stories and even real medical equipment to help children understand what might happen and who they might meet on their journey through the hospital. One technique includes letting the child do the procedure they are facing on a toy. This medical play helps the child feel empowered about their own treatment and often provides a safe space for them to voice their own concerns or questions through the toy. This type of preparation also helps the parents to understand something that is often completely unfamiliar to them.
Another important role Child Life Therapists play is providing guidance to the hospitals about ways to improve the patient experience more broadly. This includes:
influencing the design of spaces to make them look less scary and be more ‘kid friendly’;
guiding processes for example to stop any treatments from being done in a child’s bed thereby providing children with a safe haven they can retreat to; and
developing education material that can be accessed by families such as these great books written by Cathy Quinn and Lisa Carnovale, Child Life Therapists in the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, helping children needing central lines and bone marrow transplants.
Serendipitous inspiration
When our children were younger and we faced challenging experiences with hospital admissions for both major and minor surgeries and emergencies, we looked around for books or apps that might help our children and their siblings understand what they were going through. We already used games and stories to help our children prepare for new siblings, going to day care and learning how to use a toilet but we struggled to find a suitable resource for this. Everything was either very wordy and targeted at much older children or lacking in fact.
At around the same time, I was lucky enough to attend a professional development session with one of the Child Life Therapists from Sydney Children’s Hospital. The presenter spoke about the role of Child Life Therapists and talked us through an example of the work they did with children needing a hip spica cast.
Often required for young children with hip dysplasia, this cast effectively immobilises the child’s lower body so as you can imagine can be very confronting for both the child and their families. Children are provided with a jointed doll and a smaller version of a spica cast which they can then ‘try on’ the doll, thereby getting an understanding of how movement might be restricted.
Democratising access to valuable tools and techniques
This was another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that eventually led to us creating Teach Ted. Generally, access to Child Life Therapists is for children being treated in children’s hospitals and some larger general hospitals. Through Ted and his friends, we hope to share valuable tools and techniques, already successfully used in our children’s hospitals, with families around Australia and the world. Using stories and technology we can democratise access and make hospital and medical treatments easier for children and their parents.
Since we started developing our concept, we have been fortunate to engage with the Child Life Therapy teams at both Sydney Children’s Hospital and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. They have helped us to better understand the common areas that concern children and families and the techniques they use to support families.
The team at Sydney Children’s Hospital are also collaborating with UNSW and us in our upcoming research project, testing the efficacy of our app prototype for young children needing blood tests and ultrasounds. We are very grateful for their invaluable assistance and encouragement as we have progressed. We were also thrilled to speak at the recent national conference for the Association of Child Life Therapists Australia, sharing the results of our blood test survey including suggestions for how to improve patient experience from the families who responded.