From playtime to purpose: Jennifer Guilliams’ lifelong mission to help kids

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 12, 2025) – For Jennifer Guilliams, playtime is serious business. 

As the director of Child and Family Life at Kentucky Children’s Hospital (KCH), she supervises a staff of 16 who spend their days playing games, making art and generally having fun with their young patients. But what looks like fun and games belies a sneaky ulterior motive: distracting their little minds and helping them learn about the hospital environment. 

“Play is a powerful tool for children, helping them make sense of new and sometimes overwhelming experiences,” said Guilliams. “Children process the world differently than adults, and traumatic stress or injury can inhibit their ability to cope and heal. Without the intervention of a certified professional, the pain, confusion, stress and fear can have a lasting effect on their development.” 

These interventions are designed to be so fun and engaging, the patient won’t even realize it’s part of their treatment. What looks like a dance party is physical therapy — helping patients build strength, stamina and mobility. Blowing bubbles is respiratory therapy. Building with Lego bricks hones critical fine motor skills. Playing doctor with stuffed animals helps kids understand surgeries and procedures.  

“Child life services are instrumental for children’s hospitals,” said Guilliams. “The interventions — from distraction, procedural preparation, to developmental stimulation — truly make a difference in the care that children receive at KCH. Child life interventions can help children be discharged earlier, can reduce sedative medications needed for procedures, can help children overcome their fears of hospitals and medical procedures, and can improve health outcomes for children.” 

The goal of a child life specialist is to promote and protect emotional safety in times of duress, minimizing both the immediate and long-term effects of stress, anxiety, and psychosocial trauma.  

Guilliams knows firsthand how long hospital stays, invasive treatments and procedures can impact a child and their family. Her younger brother had many medical issues that required surgeries, as well as support for special needs. Guilliams remembers playing with him to distract him from the stress and anxiety that came with multiple, prolonged hospital stays.  

It wasn’t until Guilliams’ junior year at Auburn University that she learned about child life as a career path. She always knew she wanted to work with kids and pursue a career in a health-related field. Looking back, she realized she had been training for a career in child life her whole life. 

“It was an ‘ah-ha’ moment,” she said. “It was the career I’d been looking for, and I knew that I could make a difference. I’d spent many days in the hospital with my brother and knew how difficult it was for a child to be there. Everything was strange and unfamiliar and scary. I remember, as a 12-year-old, being in the hospital trying to help my brother with his pain and distracting him by playing. I guess I was practicing for my career.” 

Guilliams has been working in child life for 29 years; the last seven of which have been spent as the director for Child and Family Life at KCH. While UK’s Child Life Program was established prior to her arrival, she found ways to improve and expand the program to meet the needs of more than just the admitted patients. KCH operates a number of pediatric specialty outpatient clinics, each with their own patient population with unique experiences and specific needs. Patients in the emergency department don’t have the same experience as those who are receiving inpatient cancer treatment. By expanding the team and building a repertoire of evidence-based interventions, pediatric patients across KCH have access to a child life specialist trained for their specific needs. Additionally, she and her team have educated the health care providers with whom they work about the need for coping mechanisms for treatment, integrating themselves as vital members of the patient’s care team. 

Under Guilliams’ management, and with the blessing of KCH leadership, the Child Life Program has further expanded to include patient activity assistants, a gaming and technology specialist, an expressive arts resource specialist and a family and community engagement officer, each fulfilling an important role in caring for patients and helping to make the hospital environment less scary and overwhelming.  

But they do far more than helping a patient prepare for an upcoming surgery or procedure. Birthdays, holidays and treatment milestones are a big deal. Guilliams and her staff, along with the KCH nurses and staff, pull out all the stops to make a birthday spent in the hospital memorable. They also arrange for special visitors, such as members of the UK football team, local chef Ouita Michel and even Santa Claus himself, to hang out with the patients. The KCH Child Life Program also hosts the now-annual Teddy Bear Hospital, a free event where they demonstrate their coping skills for kids in the community. But Guilliams and her team strive to make every day special. 

“Those big events are not the only thing that our team does,” Guilliams said. “We host weekly visits in the playroom for our affiliate groups. We do craft activities daily in the playroom. We provide monthly art events in the Simpson Family Theater. We host weekly gaming events in the Kloiber Teen Lounge. There is always a special event, an activity or a special visit at the children’s hospital.” 

As fun as those big holidays and celebrity visits can be, for Guilliams, it’s the smaller moments that have the biggest impact.  

“Some are little moments, like a child saying to me ‘I did it!’ when he got through a tough procedure,” she said. “Or the time I helped to create a beach scene in a deaf patient’s room. She wasn’t able to go, and it was always her wish to see palm trees and a beach.” 

Guilliams’ plans for expanding the Child Life Program go far beyond the walls of KCH. Every child goes to the doctor, where the uncertainty and fear can make the imagination go wild. Every field of pediatrics, from primary care to oncology, would benefit from the services of a child life specialist. In conjunction with the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, she developed a child life practicum program for undergraduate students, and is working to expand the clinical internship required for certification. The next goal is to create an academic program at the University of Kentucky that includes both the educational and clinical training. The field of child life continues to experience a shortage of specialists after the COVID-19 pandemic, and a dearth of programs at university medical centers is a barrier for students to get the clinical training they need for certification.  

“Our goal is that anywhere a child receives care at KCH, they will have child life support for their medical interventions,” said Guilliams. “I think that as KCH continues to expand and address the medical needs of Kentucky’s children, child life services should also strive to be available to support Kentucky’s children experiencing medical treatments and hospitalization.” 

As the child life program continues to expand by leaps and bounds at KCH, as well as Guilliams’ vision to bring child life intervention to every child in Kentucky, her goal has been the same since she was 12 years old, playing with her brother in his hospital room: to help patients through some of the toughest, most harrowing experiences of their young lives. 

“Every time a child or family allows me the privilege of being a part of their medical journey,” she said, “it’s an honor.”