The Gathering Place
Southeastern Louisiana University
FCS 325 Alternative Assignment
The role of a Child Life Specialists has grown throughout the years and became well established. The work of a Child Life Specialist has mainly focused only on the healthcare settings, which is good but there are now more settings that need more focused on. There are so many opportunities for them to go out and branch off into other alternative settings. As the abilities and capabilities of Child Life Specialist turn out to be better achieved and more acknowledged in hospital settings. Now the duties and areas where Child Life Specialist can practice have extended. Child Life Specialist has a place working with kids past the hospital, working with children in different settings. The requirement for psychosocial administrations for children outside of the hospital was first recorded in nontraditional settings, for example, a nonprofit community support agency.
Nonprofit community support agencies give security and administration to those in need. These associations come in numerous sizes and structures, they might be in the neighborhood or national, they might be free of charge an expense, and they might be volunteer based or have paid representatives. The regions of specialization for Child Life Specialist, particularly adapting to healthcare issues and the necessities of kids under stress, are spoken to in many charitable group based associations. Therefore, this is the reason a nonprofit center was chosen. The Gathering Place is a support center available for those who are struggling with cancer in some way. The Gathering Place is a cancer support center mission is to help, instruct, and urge individuals attempting to beat the impacts of cancer in their lives. All programs and services are free to each one of those touched by cancer. Every one of the projects centers around the social, enthusiastic, physical and otherworldly needs of people with cancer.
A Child Life Specialist role at Gathering Place is to give child life services to families and children who are adapting to cancer. To work in a setting like this as Child Life Specialist, you will need to proper training, certification, and experience. They would also need the proper training when attending to a child with cancer. Similar skills a Child Life Specialist use is to teach guardians how to help their own children in seeing any therapeutic treatment which can be utilized to enable a family to adopt. There might be an incentive in giving services to members of the group as opposed to the hospitals. In spite of the fact that there is no particular information accessible, input from members demonstrates that they would want to get these help benefits in a home-like condition, for example, the Gathering Place.
There is a lot of potentials for child life to venture out more in nonprofit services. If there are any issues that affect children, families, and their lives could be a way where child life services are used. A Child Life Specialist could help families who have kids trying to manage any form of overpowering life circumstances. A rewarding feeling comes when working with children and family who are confronting some unique obstacles in their lives and helping them oversee the crisis as well as adding to build up a few aptitudes that they can apply to future life challenges. At the Gathering Place, the staff is able to show children approaches to feel better when they are concerned, perplexed or even furious.
Overall, I feel the Gathering Place is a great alternative setting where a Child Life Specialist should be. It’s a setting where they are truly needed and not just in the hospital setting. Researching for Child Life Specialist in an alternative setting was extremely challenging, there was not much information found which goes to show why more places are in need of a Child Life Specialist. The Gathering Place is just a start, there need to be more settings that provide this service, for example, the school systems, dental offices, camp for well/ill children, and pediatric home care programs. The history of a Child Life Specialist has come a long way but I believe that there is still more ground to cover.
