Boom or bust?

Are jobs in this industry on the rise? Are there any sub-sectors that are growing?

Where are the jobs? Which places have the most child life specialist opportunities?

Host said: Are jobs in this industry on the rise? Are there any sub-sectors that are growing?

Where are the jobs? Which places have the most child life specialist opportunities?

i think there are jobs -they may be limited but as an applicant you just have do well on the interviews..need to be flexible....i would think that the free standing childrens hospitals have the most opportunities they larger the hospital the more opportunites

teresadoyle@hotmail.com in Boston, Massachusetts said: !!!!!Where are the jobs, and what do you have to do to get one??? My daughter has gone to college for six years, has obtained her master's degree in child-life and cannot get a job anywhere. She has been all over the country on interviews including California, Philadelphia,Boston,Florida, etc. I am sick over all the money spent on her education and noone will hire her because she has no on the job experience as yet. How do you get the experience if noone will hire you???? Sick in MA

what volunteer /work experience does she have working with children?if shes getting interviews then it must be her interviewing techniques.......she must be qualified or they wouldnt even bother asking for an interview --for every position there may be 50 applicants ......all 50 have the education etc and since she has been on so many maybe she needs to focus on actual interviews....

i hope she finds something ..i think it will be a rewarding job...

dallas childrens medical center has a listing for job opening for child life specialist.....good luck

teresadoyle@hotmail.com in Boston, Massachusetts said: !!!!!Where are the jobs, and what do you have to do to get one??? My daughter has gone to college for six years, has obtained her master's degree in child-life and cannot get a job anywhere. She has been all over the country on interviews including California, Philadelphia,Boston,Florida, etc. I am sick over all the money spent on her education and noone will hire her because she has no on the job experience as yet. How do you get the experience if noone will hire you???? Sick in MA

Volunteer!!!!!!!!!!!!At schools, hospitals and anywhere that deals with childern. There are a lot of places that love to have volunteers. Of course you will not get paid for it but it will help her to get a foot in the door.

I did not study Child Life per se, but Art Therapy and part of the graduate program involved an internship- did your daughter fulfill a year-long internship? Anyway, Chicago has an abundance of Child Life programs- University of Chicago, Childrens Memorial, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, as well as need for Child Development Specialists such as at the Erikson Institute, a school which is also well-known for Graduate studies in Child Development. I would strongly suggest exploring Chicago.

broadanon: You obviously have no idea what it is that Child Life Specialists actually do. Yes, any good volunteer can play games, get crayons and blow bubbles with the patients. But can any volunteer teach a 3 year old child about their ALL leukemia diagnosis in a language that the child can understand? Does every volunteer understand the different ways that death is understood throughout the developmental stages, and thus work with 7 year old who is dying in order to promote meaningful conversations about her impending death with her family that will be priceless memories the family will cherish forever? Can any volunteer identify the misconceptions that each individual child has about the hospital and his health status and his treatment and then successfully confront those fears and misconceptions within the safe and therapeutic relationship the professional created? NO. I suggest you educate yourself about what the Child Life profession is REALLY all about before you make such crass and obtuse statements. If you are a parent, and your child was ever so sick and dehydrated that the nursing staff had to spend an hour and 20 different attempts to insert an IV into your screaming, strapped-to-the-table child’s arms, hands, and feet while you stood in the corner watching helplessly… You might have some respect for how the Child Life profession is changing the way health care is delivered. www.childlife.org is a good place to start.

Good God you are angry and bitter. Apparently you had some negative experiences with one or more CLSs; but I can surmise from your attitude and apparent eagerness to smear the Child Life profession as a whole, that you were not the victim. A governing law of our universe is that one gets what one expects; we attract people to us who are just like us. The more time you spend wallowing in this negative place, blaming others for your challenges -the more negative challenges you will create. I honestly hope that you can choose a different path for yourself. Good Luck :)

I am not angry. However am bitter at the ignorance people like you hold. People like you don't understand that the System is created by selfish individuals like you, me, and everyone else, and just because it IS doesn't mean it's the way it SHOULD BE and it's the way IT WILL BE! This is EXACTLY what people said about segregation and slavery 50 and 150 years ago!

SOMEONE has to pay for these 'specialist, whether it be a non-profit charity based organization. That money could be spent on much better things, such as healthcare for the poor, research, much needed engineering, or how about this for example, helping the completely poor, homeless, and sick children in Haiti that have lost EVERYTHING!! Instead of making our country and the world a better place through real Engineering and Medicine, we in America are creating useless degrees at universities such as Psychology.

Unfortunately, Universities are creating more idiotic and useless psychology based programs because it is a much easier field to study and go into (compared to real fields such as math, science, engineering, what do you do with a bachelors degree in Psychology? nothing!) and the universities want the money! The system then has to create more useless jobs to support people like these, essentially leading our country to become too FAT with more uselessness!

broadanon in Roebling, New Jersey said: To CCLS,

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! You are just trying to defend an idiotic profession created by individuals like yourself who are too INTELLECTUALLY LAZY to challenge themselves and work in a real career that actually requires some brain power!

Like I mentioned in the other forum link above, if good honest volunteers are good enough to calm a person down FROM COMMITTING suicide, are you seriously telling me that with just a little bit of training (say 50-100 hours,) they can't do ALL THE things you have mentioned above???? For example, what a pr-med or pre-allopath student WOULDN'T LOVE to teach a 3 year old child about their ALL leukemia diagnosis in a language that the child can undestand!! There you go, have a good volunteer do this for free and save the health care system $40-60K from not having to hire an overpaid babysitter!! Instead what do these child life specialists do?? If they threatened by any honest volunteer who they feel may be taking away their jobs, they go out of their way to make them QUIT (trust me, I am speaking from true observations and experiences!)

NOTHING you mentioned in the above posts sounds complicated enough that a good volunteer can't and won't do for free. The problem is that these idiotic child life specialists try to make themselves feel superior and treat volunteers like crap to protect their pathetic jobs and make themselves feel more valuable. Unfortunately health care is becoming an EASY way to create useless jobs and keep the economy going. However, like I mentioned this won't keep going for long as the US economy keeps tanking and global competition increases (other countries DON'T waste resources on useless jobs such as child life specialists!)

But you don't have to take my word for it! Just wait a few more years before joining the unemployment lline yourself like the people above! Then you will cry and wail about how there are no jobs and blame other people li

tell

and why did you volunteer for years if you were treated so badley?sounds like you wanted to be a child life specialist and dint make it.....

Child Life jobs are on the rise, and the field is growing...but it is also changing. New applicants need to keep up with the medical field, as well as changes in the Child Life domain. Volunteering is a great way to get an edge. Child Life is competitive, so think about what is going to make you stand out. Brush up on interview skills.
Light Spinner Quarterly is a magazine for Child Life Specialists that keeps people in the loop about the happenings. It also gives tips to newbies on how to navigate through the system. Best of luck!