 Having child life come over and explain that they're here for the entertainment, for the well-being, for the emotion of your child is tremendous. As you're speaking with the doctors and everything else, you can look over and see that your child is playing. Just having that support during this very scary time is immeasurable. Child life has been a wonderful addition to the services that we can offer. What child life aims to do is provide normalcy for the patients and families when they come in here. They're overwhelmed. Words go in, words go out, and we're there to help them process it. They can be a communication between medical staff and families at times, because sometimes either through play or just in a more down time, families will say more to the child life than they might say on direct questioning to the providers. So that's a major bridge in addition to the care. Another big piece of what child life does is coping skills. We teach the kids how to cope with invasive as well as non-invasive things that are going to happen. It's just scary to be here. We have that skill set. We have that background knowledge and development knowledge. Each time we go in to prepare a kid, it's based specifically to that child. The most rewarding job is for a kid to take what I give them and utilize it on their own. I really want to give them the power to feel like they own their experience, not just have to be part of the experience. One of the things I'm most proud of of my team is the way that we are able to communicate with each other. We're always cross-communicating so that everybody knows what to anticipate and expect from these patients and they already can have goals set. Not only are we benefiting that child and their family, the staff benefits from our service. We make it easier for them to do their job. To have a team of trained people in this area who are available and committed just really improves the patient experience dramatically. It's so scary when you can't see your child breathe and when you see wires and hoses and you can look to the side and you see this professional, you see this person and it says child life and they have a bag of goodies and there's a plushie and there are crayons and there's a coloring book and there's some normalcy. When I needed to just step out of the room to take care of myself, I was so anxious to leave my daughter, but there was someone from Child Life Center right there. I'll stay with her. They whipped out the paints and the crafts and it was just like, Mommy, that's not healthcare, that's well care, it's amazing. So as the mother of a child who was treated here many years ago, it was very emotional at the time for me. Child Life was there to entertain my son, take all his fears and anxieties away. I have a personal connection to this program and I can't say enough about the importance of supporting it. On the floor, we have myself and then depending on the day, typically we have a minimal two child life specialists covering the floor and that includes our 8-bedded ICU. In the ER, we have two overlapping specialists. At the Cancer Center for Kids, we have one full-time child life specialist, one full-time music therapist and now we just hired a three days a week position for a child life specialist there and then we have a music therapist that's per diem and an art therapist that's per diem and both of them work either here on the floor or on a referral basis down in the NICU as well. We've seen a growth in child life extending services from just our inpatient service initially to now we can provide support and help for children here on the inpatient pediatric unit but also in the pediatric emergency room and we're also developing ambulatory services they help in the hematology oncology, the children's cancer program, also in the pediatric outpatient unit and have also been instrumental in helping us develop our STAR program, a navigator program where child life helps coordinate with families and children with special needs. We are not able to build for these kind of services. Their salaries, their positions are solely funded through fundraising. Ultimately my dream for the program is to expand hospital-wide. Through funding we would be able to expand the program. There's no amount of money that you can give for anybody to know how my heart feels right now. Give to child life. Please. This has to expand. It has to get bigger. It's everything. Not only is child life important, I think that it's an integral part of the services that NYU Winter provides. It is so unique and we are so blessed but also the team, the camaraderie and I think that the services that we are able to provide as a whole has been phenomenal and I could not be more proud to work here.