2021 ACLP Assessment Package

Looking to strengthen your assessment skills? This 5 webinar package offers participants the chance to fortify their assessment skills and earn 6.5 PDUs in the Assessment Domain. 

This package contains access to the following webinars:

  1. Moving Beyond Theories that Guide Child Life (2021)
  2. Redefining the Rites of Passage: A Comprehensive Approach to Preparing Pediatric Patients for Adult Care (2021)
  3. Foundational Interventions of Child Life Practice: Using Theory & Assessment to Differentiate the Tools (2021)
  4. Child Life Care of Gender Expansive Youth (2020)
  5. Playing with Grief: Perspectives from two Child Life Specialists in Palliative Care (2020)

  • Moving Beyond Theories that Guide Child Life
    Contains 4 Component(s), Includes Credits

    Theories influence the beliefs and actions of child life professionals. For decades, child life specialists have applied developmental theories and screening tools in their work and have an ethical responsibility to reflect on theories and maintain currency in today's pediatric settings. This webinar will provide an opportunity to consider alternate theories, developed from childhood studies, that reflect today's views of children and childhood. A critique of developmental theories will provide a much-needed examination of how these conceptual frameworks affect the assessment we make and inhibit our ability to provide the best care. Recommended Exam Domain: Assessment

    Theories influence the beliefs and actions of child life professionals. For decades, child life specialists have applied developmental theories and screening tools in their work and have an ethical responsibility to reflect on theories and maintain currency in today's pediatric settings. This webinar will provide an opportunity to consider alternate theories, developed from childhood studies, that reflect today's views of children and childhood. A critique of developmental theories will provide a much-needed examination of how these conceptual frameworks affect the assessment we make and inhibit our ability to provide the best care. 

    Participants will be able to:

    • Consider new ways of thinking and doing by incorporating insights from contemporary theories
    • Challenge and deconstruct assumptions derived from developmental stage theories
    • Incorporate new perspectives into assessments of patients and families

    Recommended Exam Domain: Assessment

    Donna Koller, Ph.D.

    Dr. Donna Koller is a Professor within the School of Early Childhood Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She has a doctoral degree in child development and applied psychology from the University of Toronto and has worked in three pediatric settings (US and Canada), both in clinical and research capacities. Currently, she holds an adjunct scientist position with The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Research Institute. Previously, she was employed as the first academic and clinical specialist in child life at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, Canada. As a strong advocate for the child life profession, Dr. Koller wrote the first evidence-based practice statements for the Child Life Council. Her research interests include psychosocial care in pediatrics and children's participation rights in healthcare decision-making. Presently, she is principal investigator on two projects involving the social inclusion of children with chronic medical conditions and disabilities. As an outcome of a previous study, she helped create a psychoeducational tool called 'My Diabetes Playbox' to help young children with diabetes learn more about their disease; a newly created app based on the playbox is available in American and Canadian versions. Internationally, she has presented at several conferences and consulted on psychosocial care issues with pediatric health care providers in the Middle East and across North America.

  • Child Life Care of Gender-Expansive Children and Youth
    Contains 4 Component(s), Includes Credits

    This webinar reviews terminology and describes clinical guidelines for gender-affirming interventions. Additionally, it describes affirmative, trauma-informed, culturally humble, and strength-based approaches in caring for the population, grounded in core child life principles.

    Transgender and gender-expansive individuals are increasingly visible in society. Recent estimates indicate that approximately 0.7% of youth 13-17 years of age (150,000 individuals) and 0.6 % of adults (1.4 million individuals) in the United States identify as transgender. Recognizing their unique medical and psychosocial needs, clinical care programs for transgender and gender-expansive children and youth are now present in many children’s hospitals across the country. Child life specialists working with transgender and gender-expansive children and youth have the opportunity to create safe and affirming environments, provide comfort and support, and foster communication and connectedness with parents, caregivers, and healthcare providers. This webinar reviews terminology and describes clinical guidelines for gender-affirming interventions. Additionally, it describes affirmative, trauma-informed, culturally humble, and strength-based approaches in caring for the population, grounded in core child life principles. The session will draw upon the experience of Phoenix Children’s Hospital’s Gender Support Program and include patient and parent perspectives. 


    Participants will be able to:

    -Differentiate natal sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation


    -Discuss clinical guidelines in the care of gender diverse children and youth 

    -Discuss considerations in the care of gender diverse children and youth for the child life specialist


    -Describe affirmative, culturally humble, and strength-based clinical approaches to gender diverse children and youth

    Suggested Domain: Assessment

    This webinar is part of our Established Professionals programming. 

    Veenod L. Chulani, MD, MSED, FAAP, FSAHM

    Dr. Chulani is section chief of adolescent medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and medical director of Phoenix Children’s Gender Support Program. He is also an associate professor of pediatrics in the department of child health at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. He completed his pediatric residency training at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, his clinical and research fellowships in adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and his master’s in medical education from the University of Southern California – Keck School of Medicine. His clinical and research areas of interest are in the areas of health equity promotion and the care of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. He has been involved in numerous local, regional, and national workgroups and initiatives and has lectured nationally and internationally on a host of topics related to adolescent health. 

  • Playing with Grief: Perspectives from Two Child Life Specialists in Palliative Care
    Contains 4 Component(s), Includes Credits

    Child life specialists interact with children in multiple settings for a multitude of reasons. Many of the assessments and interventions performed by child life specialists are efficient evaluations of a child’s present coping and their ability to apply these coping mechanisms to a new experience. This is also true when assessing and working with children experiencing grief. We often need to make quick assessments about a child’s grief and their understanding of its trigger. Child life specialists observe and assess how grief manifests and then find ways to support healthy coping and redirect maladaptive coping. This webinar will explore grief through different professional lenses, introduce participants to novel grief assessment techniques, and discuss how the information obtained in assessment may be practically translated into meaningful interventions. This discussion will review how grief is a dynamic process in which the individual’s grief informs and shapes play-based interventions. Suggested domain: Assessment This webinar is part of our Emerging Professional programming.

    Child life specialists interact with children in multiple settings for a multitude of reasons. Many of the assessments and interventions performed by child life specialists are efficient evaluations of a child’s present coping and their ability to apply these coping mechanisms to a new experience. This is also true when assessing and working with children experiencing grief. We often need to make quick assessments about a child’s grief and their understanding of its trigger. Child life specialists observe and assess how grief manifests and then find ways to support healthy coping and redirect maladaptive coping. This webinar will explore grief through different professional lenses, introduce participants to novel grief assessment techniques, and discuss how the information obtained in assessment may be practically translated into meaningful interventions. This discussion will review how grief is a dynamic process in which the individual’s grief informs and shapes play-based interventions.

    Participants will be able to:

    • Describe how play can be used for grief assessment
    • Discuss how to translate these grief assessments into play-based intervention strategies to promote healthy grief and positive coping 

    Suggested  domain: Assessment

    This webinar is part of our Emerging Professional programming. 

    Stephanie Barta

    CCLS

    Stephanie is a Certified Child Life Specialist with seven years of experience in high acuity patient care settings. Stephanie graduated from the University of Iowa with a BS in Child Life and minors in Spanish and Theatre Arts. She is currently obtaining her Masters of Arts in Human Development and Family Science with an emphasis in Youth Development from the University of Missouri. Stephanie was a child life specialist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for five years before accepting her position as a community-based child life specialist with Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in the Quality of Life for All Kids Program in Memphis, TN in 2017. This program provides compassionate care to palliative and hospice-eligible patients and families in hospital housing facilities and in the Memphis community. 

    Joanna Lyman

    MA, CCLS

    Joanna is a Certified Child Life Specialist who has fourteen years of clinical experience, with the last nine years including extensive work in pediatric palliative care. She graduated from the University of Santa Monica with a Master’s degree in psychology and is also a certified hypnotherapist and a level II Reiki practitioner. Joanna currently manages the palliative care team at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN. Noteworthy accomplishments include joint publications in American Childhood Cancer Society Handbook for Parents, Expert Review of Quality of Life in Cancer, and Palliative Care in Pediatric Oncology, and plenary speaking engagements at pediatric palliative care and bioethics conferences across the county.