Healing Young Hearts: Inside Craig Hospital’s New Child Life Program

After sustaining a spinal cord injury last fall and beginning neurorehabilitation at Craig Hospital, a patient eagerly awaited his five-year-old daughter’s first visit. But the family worried that the visit would be overwhelming for the preschooler, so the Psychology team referred the family to Craig’s new, donor-supported Child Life (CL) program, where she received support in preparation for the visit.

“I worked with her to ensure she was ready to see her father in a wheelchair and met with her after the visit,” explains Reagan Sport, Craig’s certified child life specialist. “Additionally, we continued to have informal check-ins throughout her father’s time at Craig.”

After the preschooler returned to school, she began having issues with classmates not wanting to play with her for fear that they too would end up in the hospital.

“So, I developed several age-appropriate tools to help the classroom teacher educate other students about the family’s situation,” Reagan says. “Not only is individualized intervention vital, but early, proactive support can help prevent later distress. The goal of the CL program is to create an emotionally safe health care experience, because hospitalizations can be extremely daunting and scary, especially for children.”

Family-Centered Care

Conversations about developing a CL program at Craig began back in 2024. “While the hospital has a variety of disciplines that address family functioning—such as Psychology, Clinical Care Management and Recreational Therapy—these disciplines tend to focus more on helping our adult patients understand the needs of their children during life-altering changes in the family,” explains Toby Huston, Ph.D., Craig Hospital VP of Neurorehabilitative Services. “We knew that inclusion of a Child Life program would add an important missing element of child-specific interventions that would complement the services we already provide at Craig.”

After determining the program should be a partnership between the Psychology and Recreational Therapy departments, Toby and Tom Carr, Craig’s director of Recreational Therapy, reached out to the Child Life department at Children’s Hospital Colorado and proposed a collaboration between the two hospitals.

“The Children’s Hospital team was extremely receptive to the idea and performed a needs assessment, which included a site visit, focus groups with our clinicians, nurses, and psychologists, and an analysis of findings,” Toby says.

This assessment led to the creation of a pilot program, which began in June 2025 with the hiring of Reagan. “I was a CCLS at Children’s Hospital Colorado for four years before I moved over to Craig on a contract basis,” she says.

Since last summer, Reagan has served more than 43 families at Craig and held more than 90 direct patient/family care sessions.

“My role as a CCLS is to help children and families cope with the stress of medical experiences through therapeutic play, education and emotional support,” she explains. “I work with kids to understand what is happening in honest, age-appropriate ways. In addition, I provide families with tools to talk with their kids and partner with staff to support kids whose parents are patients at the hospital.”

As part of the CL program, Reagan administers assessments to help gauge a child’s development level, as well as understand the psychosocial needs of the child and family, understanding the injury, available support systems and overall coping.

Children also receive individualized, developmentally appropriate, play-based interventions, which include trauma and grief support, school support, coping support, medical play, and diagnosis teaching. Resources include developmental support, tips for separation, and discharge support.

“Our hope is that this pilot program will become a permanent offering. CL programs are relatively new in the adult health care setting—and it is brand new for us at Craig,” Toby says. “Because rehabilitation is a family effort, it’s all about a strong support system, so it’s essential for us to take care of the family members who support the patients and their recovery.”

Reagan adds, “By integrating CL within Craig’s existing interdisciplinary infrastructure, we can enhance family-centered care and improve child outcomes. CL programs help to reduce fear, build coping skills, and protect a child’s emotional well-being during very difficult times. What was once a gap at Craig is now being filled.”