Community Letters &
Testimonials

I am writing to share my family's deeply personal experience with Kelly Cox, a Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS), and to urge you to consider the importance of licensure for CCLSs in Texas. My name is Jacqueline Hudkins, and I am a widow and a military mother to two young boys, ages 6 and 9. Our family's journey was forever changed in November 2023 when my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma and passed away just 55 days later. Our children were only 5 and 7 at the time.

When my husband was hospitalized, Kelly Cox was there for us—providing invaluable emotional support not only for my children but also for me as their mother. My boys, already struggling to adjust to our new life in Texas after our recent move, were further challenged as I, a military mother, had been separated from them and their father for three months prior. They were suddenly faced with their father being hospitalized, diagnosed with cancer, and, tragically, the loss of their beloved daddy. The weight of all those events would be overwhelming for any adult, let alone young children. I was at a loss for how to help my children cope with such immense grief and find a way to explain everything to them in a way they could understand. Through it all, Kelly was a steady presence, offering me words of wisdom, comfort and ways to explain what was happening. She also gave my boys the emotional guidance they needed to navigate their grief, their fear, and their confusion.

Kelly didn't just help my children in the hospital. She continued to provide support long after we left that hospital room, helping my boys process the loss of their dad, assisting them in understanding their feelings, and helping me as a mother know how best to support them. She helped our family through one of the darkest, most uncertain times in our lives, and I can't imagine how we would have made it through without her. She is, and will forever be, one of the biggest blessings of my life.

What Kelly provided to my children and our family was not just a job to her—it was a calling. Child Life Specialists are a vital part of any healthcare team, yet, in Texas, they remain an unlicensed profession. The absence of licensure for CCLSs means that families like mine may not always have access to the critical support they need when facing the most challenging circumstances.

The emotional and mental health of children going through medical crises, loss, or transition should never be left to chance. Licensing would ensure that families can trust that the professionals helping their children are not only qualified but also held to the highest standards. CCLSs like Kelly should be recognized for their expertise, and Texas children should have the assurance that those providing emotional support in healthcare settings are thoroughly trained and certified.

I implore you to support the effort to grant licensure to Child Life Specialists in Texas. My family was fortunate to have Kelly's expertise and compassion, and we are better for it. There are countless other families who deserve the same level of support in their time of need. Please consider lending your voice to the cause of licensure for CCLSs in Texas. Your support could make all the difference for families who, like mine, are navigating the unthinkable.

I was 43 years old, a mom of a very silly, curious, and active five-year-old son, Jack, a wife to a wonderful husband of 10 years, and a busy commercial real estate finance attorney. On a July evening of 2016, I found a large lump in my breast. That moment changed our lives. I had had a clear 3D Mammogram seven months prior. I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer ("TNBC"). According to the Mayo Clinic, TNBC "is one of the most aggressive and lethal types of breast cancer."

In all of healthcare, as a mother or father, when you are seriously ill, the moment you find out, your child is the first thing you think about. Your heart lives outside of you, and your child is paramount. As my husband, Steve, and I navigated biopsies, treatment plans, PET scans, and doctors' appointments, of the many worries on our plate, our main concern was how to explain this all to Jack. How do we explain how chemo would make me sick? Why would my hair fall out? And even worse, what if I died? Then we learned about Cinda, the Child Life Specialist at Baylor Hospital Dallas. Cinda met with us in the chemotherapy infusion room to get to know each other and learn about Jack. She taught us that kids worry about things we wouldn't even consider, like can they catch it? Did he give it to me?

CCLSs support pediatric patients and children of seriously ill adult patients and enhance the overall patient and family experience through evidence-based therapeutic interventions tailored to each child and family's unique needs. I have that evidence through our personal experience.

CCLSs remain an unlicensed profession in Texas. Licensing would ensure that families can trust that the professionals helping their children are qualified and held to the highest standards. Texas children should have the assurance that those providing emotional support in healthcare settings are thoroughly trained and certified.

I implore you to support the effort to grant licensure to Child Life Specialists in Texas. Please help the children in Texas. Nelson Mandela claimed, "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."

I am a palliative care physician and director for the division in Temple, Texas. I work closely with our team of Palliative Care Child Life Specialists, to coordinate services for children of seriously ill adults.

The opportunity to expand these essential services to more patients and their children is desperately needed. We hope that licensure for Texas CCLSs will expand employment opportunities and bring more CCLSs to Texas. I am in full support of licensure for Certified Child Life Specialists in Texas, to protect the public and specifically our Texas children and families; and to ensure they have access to psychosocial support from a competent, qualified Certified Child Life Specialist.

My first introduction to a Child Life Specialist was in 2017. Having worked with them daily since then, when I look back, I wonder whether I did enough to support families with young children for the two and half decades before I knew this field even existed.

I'm a geriatrician by training. While my training helps me address the medical, emotional, and psychosocial needs of older adults, I have repeatedly encountered a gap when it comes to supporting children facing illness, loss, or the impending death of a loved one. I feel inadequately equipped to meet the needs of families with young children.

Child Life Specialists fill this critical gap. I have witnessed firsthand the profound difference they make. They have expert ability to distill complex medical information about ECMO, LVAD, etc into simple language and help adolescents and teenagers understand the journey their loved one are on.

In Supportive Palliative Care, we emphasize supporting the entire family. We can only accomplish this with the expertise of Child Life Specialists. Their presence transforms the care environment—reducing anxiety, improving communication, and helping families navigate some of the most difficult experiences of their lives.

Formal licensure for Child Life Specialists would ensure standardized training, professional accountability, and broader access to these essential services. It would strengthen interdisciplinary care teams and ultimately improve the quality of care delivered to families across Texas. I strongly believe that recognizing and licensing Child Life Specialists is both necessary and overdue.

Thank you for your consideration.

My name is Danielle Denard and I am writing today in support of the Child Life Specialist licensing legislation. I have a very personal experience that I would like to share as to why I am so in awe of what these professionals mean to families with a child in the hospital.

When my son was just a little over 2 years old, he had a toxic reaction to Hand, Foot and Mouth. He became so sick, so fast that we ended up in the ER and immediately admitted with something I had never heard of, Staph Scalded Skin Syndrome. I quickly learned that this was a potentially fatal form of staph and we entered into a 6 day hospital stay at Children's Health in Plano, TX. We saw specialist after specialist, and were on the heaviest hitting IV antibiotics possible. The things that my sweet baby had to endure that week, the pain, the fear, the being attached to endless cords and wires and IV's….it was almost too much to bear. My heart, so broken and helpless feeling, almost couldn't take it.

There were angels that carried us through each day, the incredible pediatric nurses and Child Life Specialists. They brought endless amounts of smiles and joy to our hard days in the hospital room. They would bring in toys, games, snacks…anything to make my little baby smile. Not only did they bring things developmentally appropriate for his age to play with and occupy him, but they supported my husband and me in so many ways as well. One of the most life changing moments they brought was in the midst of an incredibly hard IV change. Many of his tiny veins were blown and they were searching for a good vein, poking him over and over. He was screaming and thrashing and we were having to hold him down. I almost didn't make it. I asked them to stop, to give him something for the pain before continuing any further. There was a Child Life Specialist in the room and she had this vibration toy that ended up helping him through this traumatic event. She taught me that when you hold the vibration in a different area of the body, the brain automatically focuses there instead of where the pain source is. From then on, for every poke, I used that to help him through the pain. She literally changed everything for us for the rest of his hospitalization. Not to mention, she sat with me and held me in the hallway as I was breaking completely down. Seeing my son in that much excruciating pain and not being able to help him was the lowest point of my life. She literally held me through the hardest time of my life.

To know now that not all Child Life Specialists are licensed and background checked, is horrifying. I just blindly assumed that everyone who came in my son's hospital room was a safe person. Especially the specialists. A person with malicious intent would have the easiest "in" to do harm in a scenario like this. Please pass this legislation that requires all CLS to be licensed and background checked. When you are in this vulnerable state and feel helpless as it is, the last thing you want to have to worry about is someone intentionally harming your child.

I would be delighted to share more of our story and do whatever I possibly can to help with this legislation.

The American Academy of Pediatrics states that, "advocating for child life services as an essential part of the interdisciplinary team is a responsibility of health care organizations to ensure it is a standard of pediatric care and should occur on local and national levels as well as in regulatory and accrediting organizations."

The Texas Legislature should establish licensing requirements for child life specialists in both adult and pediatric settings, in hospitals and within the community, that fall within the scope of support for CCLSs.