Child Life Creative Arts Therapy and the Zone

UC Davis' Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy department helps to minimize the anxiety of hospitalization, increase understanding and strengthen coping skills while helping children to proceed their typical growth and evolution.

Child life specialists, along with music and art therapists, provide support and age-appropriate coping strategies, while educating families, staff and physicians about the special needs of hospitalized children.

Play materials tin be provided at each kid's bedside and play opportunities are available in the teen and children'south playrooms.

Art and music therapists utilise the creative arts to promote healing past offering tools for self-expression while children cope with symptoms, stress or traumatic experiences. The department also includes a full-time schoolhouse teacher, a playroom coordinator and many volunteers.

UC Davis' child life specialists:

• Provide information, support, and education to families
• Explain medical and surgical procedures to children using play, puppets and medical equipment
• Back-trail children to medical procedures and/or surgery to provide caption, reassurance and emotional back up
• Introduce coping strategies to help reduce anxiety and heighten cooperation with the wellness care team
• Help siblings understand the hospital surroundings, coping and visitation
• Arrange special events and activities for children and families to help normalize the hospital environment

Patient and family unit support

Kid life specialists are trained professionals who focus on the emotional well-being of hospitalized children and their families in effort to reduce feet and promote effective coping; this is facilitated through play, self-expressive activities and age-appropriate medical grooming and educational activity. Child Life Specialists concord paramount the importance of family- and patient-centered care, and in collaboration with others on the wellness-care team, aim to run into the psychosocial and developmental needs of each child.

Art therapy

The art therapist utilizes the arts to assist healing by offering tools for cocky-expression while the children cope with symptoms, stress, or traumatic experiences.

Art therapy in the pediatric setting helps children to cope with the hospital experience. It allows them to take an active part in their own healing. Art therapy places the value on art making as a tool for insight and discovery. Making fine art does not crave words to limited feelings. It engages the right side of the brain, the part of the encephalon responsible for intuitive, creative and imaginative impulses. Developmentally, this works well for children because art making reveals their internal experience in a safe, secure way.

During private sessions and the daily fine art group, children engage in a wide variety of mediums and techniques which are developmentally appropriate, enjoyable and open to the entire family, thus allowing families a place to participate in normal activities.

Music therapy

Music therapy provides opportunities for children to release energy and emotions past actively playing instruments. Familiar songs bring a connection to dwelling house, while besides offering an opportunity to work on and go along to develop gross and fine motor skills in a fun setting. A daily music group is provided to give families a place to play and sing together, taking a break from the worries of hospitalization.

For older children and children who are unable to come to grouping, instruments can exist brought to the bedside for cocky-expression. Keyboard and guitar lessons tin be offered and run the gamut of merely playing effectually on the instruments to learning versions of classical music or pop songs. Some of the teenagers who accept been hospitalized for weeks at a time have earned schoolhouse credit for daily lessons.

The art and music therapists are trained in relaxation techniques that tin can exist helpful in pain direction and stress reduction for the pediatric patient.

Infirmary school services

Schoolhouse is an of import part of every child's life. We have two full-time credentialed schoolteachers so the hospitalized school-historic period kid tin keep to achieve academic goals and interact with peers.

The hospital schoolteachers collaborate with the student'due south classroom and/or home instruction teacher and other health professionals involved in the patient'due south intendance to provide appropriate educational services. Educational sessions for K-12 patients are provided in a minor group setting or at bedside, as medically appropriate. A parent'south or guardian'south signature is required to enroll.

Play spaces

Play areas are bachelor for patients and their siblings. These areas provide rubber environments for children to have fun and interact with each other; Kid Life staff and volunteers supervise these areas. Children may occupy their time by assembling jigsaw puzzles, creating art projects, or playing with toys. In improver to those individual pursuits, they may engage in activities with other children, including playing board games, and participating in "story time" readings and special events. Play areas are located on the general pediatric unit, Tower half-dozen and in the Pediatric and Cardiac Intensive Care Unit of measurement (PICU).

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Source: https://health.ucdavis.edu/children/clinical_services/child_life_program/