02/17/2026
Child Life Month is right around the corner, and we are offering what we always do -- TWO free Child Life webinars! In March, we are very excited to welcome Jenaya Gordon and Jenni Davis, both seasoned Certified Child Life Specialists, leaders, researchers, and Emotional Safety Initiative experts and advocates! Come ready to learn about and discuss emotional safety, why it is a shared responsibility beyond Child Life, and how we can all collaborate across disciplines to achieve a shared goal in pediatric care -- better health and support for children.
Objectives:
- Differentiate emotional safety and psychological safety
- Recognize how emotionally unsafe care affects both patients and healthcare professionals
- Explore how collaboration supports emotionally safe care
- Reflect on how prioritizing patient emotional safety can guide decisions about training, teamwork, and systems
Speakers:
1. Jenaya Gordon, MA, CCLS, NCC
Jenaya is the Patient Emotional Safety Specialist with the Patient Safety Team at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In this role, she focuses on proactively reducing emotional harm for pediatric patients through policies, procedures, and education. Jenaya is a Certified Child Life Specialist with over 20 years’ experience in pediatrics. She was a contributing author for the Handbook of Medical Play Therapy and Child Life and authored the paper Emotional Safety in Pediatrics.
2. Jenni Davis, PhD, CCLS, CTRS
Jenni is a dually certified child life specialist and recreational therapist with more than 30 years of experience helping children and families cope with hospitalization and healthcare experiences. She has worked in children’s hospitals across Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona, and supported the activation of Sidra Medicine, a women’s and children’s hospital in Qatar. Jenni currently serves as the Clinical Education Specialist for Patient and Family Experience at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Her work focuses on promoting emotional safety for patients and families while supporting healthcare professionals in delivering developmentally informed, trauma-responsive, and emotionally safe care. Jenni holds a PhD in International Family and Community Studies from Clemson University. Her doctoral research focused on emotional safety in pediatric outpatient care, examining how child life services shape healthcare professionals’ perceptions of their own work and the experiences of patients and families. She has also completed research on parenting in the Arab world. Jenni is the co-founder of Saguaro Coping, which applies child life expertise to create accessible, community-based support for children and caregivers facing illness, loss, and major life transitions.
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This webinar will be recorded. If you are not able to attend live, you will be required to complete a post-quiz after watching the recording in order to earn a certificate. You must be registered to receive the recording.
By signing up for this webinar, you are agreeing to have your contact information shared with this webinar's sponsor: Be Her Village. To learn more about Be Her Village, go to www.behervillage.com
To register for the event go to www.heartsconnected.org/event
