Dallas Child life Practicum or Pre-Internship

A child life professional plays a vital role in supporting a child’s well-being during treatment and hospitalization, offering guidance, education, and comfort to help prevent anxiety from becoming overwhelming. Hospitals can feel overwhelming for both children and their families, especially when they are already facing the stress and anxiety of a serious diagnosis.

Through a range of specialized strategies, child life specialists help children and families better understand their experiences and build coping skills. This support not only reduces fear and stress but also enhances a child’s ability to heal, both physically and emotionally.

The child life department is committed to providing quality education and training to future child life professionals who will play this crucial role.

Practicums are organized to give you the opportunity to gain insight into to the child life profession and exposure to the skills and techniques required. They’re also designed to help you understand the unique needs of hospitalized children and families and the important role you can play.

The child life practicum at Children’s Medical Center Dallas campus is 160 hours. During the spring and fall semesters, the experience occurs two days a week over 10 weeks. For the summer session, it occurs four times a week over a 5-week period. Your clinical supervisor, the student programming committee, and child life specialists will help to instruct and guide you throughout this experience.

Download a Practicum Information Packet (pdf)

Requirements

There is no application fee to apply to our program. There is also no fee charged to students who are accepted to complete our practicum program.

Practicum curriculum involves both clinical and non-clinical requirements. You will be required to:

Process experiences in a weekly journal
Plan and implement therapeutic activities
Complete two in-depth assignments to learn about assessing and prioritizing patients
Create a final portfolio project in preparation for internship interviews
Complete an end of practicum interview to prepare for internship interviews

Application Requirements

To be considered as a candidate for a Child Life Practicum, you will be required to meet the following criteria. At the time of application, you must:

Be enrolled as a current student at a university (and remain enrolled during the practicum). Please note that at this time, we are unable to enter into new affiliation agreements. View the
List of Universities in current affiliation agreements with Children's Health.
Please do not submit your application as no exceptions can be made by our hospital
Have experience working with children. This experience can be virtual or in person and can include volunteer and/or paid experiences
Have a minimum 3.0 MAJOR GPA
Applicants must have completed at least 15 hours of related course work.
- Applicants must now list 3 of the 5 required courses on the application as the courses listed in the table below, which include completion of the play course, 1 child development course and child life course. These 3 courses can be in progress at the time of the practicum application, but must be completed by the start of the practicum experience.
- The table below shows the courses the Association of Child Life Professionals (ACLP) require candidates to sit for the Child Life Certification examination. Please view the eligibility requirements for the exam (pdf) (pdf) for more details on these changes.

How to Apply

1. Complete the ACLP Internship Readiness Common Application

Complete the SACLP Common Child Life Practicum Application (pdf) (pdf)

The application components you will complete include:

Completion of the downloaded SACLP Application (pdf) (pdf) (pages 1 – 8 completed by the applicant)
Unofficial University transcripts from all Universities
One-page resume/CV
Two Reference forms (pdf) (pdf) (pages 9 – 10 of SACLP PDF)
If the required courses are not completed at the time of applying to the practicum then the candidate must submit a Course in Progress Form (pdf) (pdf). The 3 required courses must be complete by the time the practicum experience starts (page 11 of SACLP PDF)

2. Submit the downloaded application and additional documents via email

Once the SACLP application has been completed, applicants can submit the PDF, the one-page resume, unofficial University transcripts, and the course in progress form (if applicable) by emailing it to practicumapplications@childrens.com
The Email subject line should state the practicum session (winter/spring, fall, summer) and the year.
**Please note that currently, we are unable to enter into new affiliation agreements. View the List of Universities in current affiliation agreements with Children's Health. If your school is not on this list, then you will not be eligible to apply with us at this time.**
Please contact us at practicumapplications@childrens.com if you have any questions.

3. Two reference form submissions

Utilize the SACLP Common Reference Form (pdf) (pdf) - reference forms must be emailed directly by the person completing the reference by the due dates listed below.
Applicants are required to have a reference form completed by a school advisor or instructor/professor

Deadlines

Interview Process

After initial application screening, candidates will be notified via email re: their status of moving forward to phase 2, which is to participate in a formal interview. Candidates selected to participate in the formal interview will schedule their time slot via email and then the actual interview will be conducted via Zoom.

Ten candidates will be selected to participate in the formal interview process. At Children’s Health, we conduct Multi-Mini Interviews (MMI) where candidates rotate through 5 stations for 15 minutes at each station and meet with the interviewer individually. Candidates chosen for the interview can choose to participate during either the morning session (8am-11am) or afternoon session (12:30pm-3:30pm). Candidates must be available to stay for the entire time on the dates listed below. There will be a group information session and Q&A at the end. All interviews will be conducted virtually using Zoom for all candidates.

Interview Dates for 2026: