Child Life Internships

We promote diversity, equity and inclusion within our student program

The 600-hour Child Life Internship at Children's Medical Center Dallas provides a supervised, guided learning experience with children. It has been designed to meet your unique needs and allow you to acquire professional child life skills.

Child Life Internships are offered in spring, summer and fall to students attending a university. They’re organized to meet the requirements of the Association of Child Life Professionals (ACLP) certification, to address your specific interests, and comply with your academic institution's requirements. The internship is a 15-week, 40 hour a week, full-time unpaid position that is divided into two, six week rotations with orientation, site visit and shadow weeks in between the rotations.

The basic components of the internship are organized around the child life competencies. As an intern you will

  • Increase your familiarity with hospital policies and procedures by observing child life staff in various settings.

  • Learn about diverse areas in child life by participating in daily student groups.

  • Work in two different clinical areas of the Child Life Department for six weeks each. In these assignments you provide child life services, under the supervision of a Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS), to the patient population served.

  • Participate in multidisciplinary meetings such as patient care conferences and clinical rounds.

  • Complete the following assignments: case presentations, evidence based practice (EBP) presentation, child life talks, pediatric diagnosis presentation, an intern project, weekly journals and required readings.

  • Attend additional learning experiences to meet specific areas of interest or to address the academic institution’s requirements.

The internship curriculum incorporates child life programming challenges and strategies to further your ability to address current health care issues. You will be given the opportunity to:

  • Build independent professional skills

  • Strengthen your therapeutic group play supervision skills

  • Develop assessment and intervention skills with individual patients

Your clinical supervisor, along with other staff members in the department, provides instruction and guidance. You typically will work the same hours as your clinical supervisor. Additional evening, and weekend and holiday experiences may be required. The interns are also required to work a holiday which is either Easter, July 4 or Halloween. 

Students are evaluated based upon the following:

  • Written mid-term and final evaluations using the ACLP Intern Evaluation Tool

  • Objectives determined by the student and supervisor 

  • Objectives established by the student's academic department

  • Completion of all required assignments, which include the ACLP Internship Modules

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