Previously recorded
Upedia webinars
Explore timely topics, gain insights from content experts, and earn PDUs to advance your career. Don’t miss these impactful learning opportunities!
Previously recorded
Previously recorded webinars
August 19th, 12-1pm
Cassie Camara
*Comfort Across the Lifespan: How Child Life Techniques Support Adults & their families at the End of Life
Cassie Camara is a Certified Child Life Specialist and the Coordinator of the Andrea’s 3 Wishes Program at The Hamilton General Hospital. Prior to Cassie’s role at the Hamilton General Hospital she worked as a Certified Child Life Specialist at McMaster Children’s Hospital for 9 years in both inpatient and outpatient setting. Cassie has a strong passion for expanding the reach of child life services beyond the traditional pediatric environments. Cassie advocates for integrating child life principles into adult care setting. Her innovative approach aims to provide comfort, coping strategies and a holistic support to patients and their families across the life span, ensuring that therapeutic interventions are inclusive and tailored to the individual she is supporting creating more compassionate and comprehensive care environments.
Fall 2021
Barbara Rubel, MA, BCETS, D.A.A.E.T.S
Compassion Fatigue and Resilience Among Child Life Specialists and Health Care Professionals
This webinar will focus on ways to mitigate the impact of job burnout, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. Child Care Specialists will understand a framework that strengthens their positive coping methods. Objectives: As a result of this webinar, participants will be able to: 1. Describe compassion fatigue and various trauma 2. Describe eight ways to mitigate the impact of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma 3. Identify character strengths to build personal resilience Barbara Rubel, MA, BCETS, D.A.A.E.T.S. is an author and keynote speaker on increasing skills and strengths that improve the ability to handle job burnout, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma. She received a BS in Psychology and MA in Community Health with a concentration in thanatology from Brooklyn College and is a Board-Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress. Her website is www.griefworkcenter.com Support by Air Canada Foundation
Fall 2022
Dr. Jenny Chabot
Manage Ambiguous Loss: Finding Meaning & Validation in the Many Losses of Hospitalization.
Ambiguous loss (AL) can involve death and non-death related losses. According to Pauline Boss, "with ambiguous loss, there is no closure; the challenge is to learn how to live with the ambiguity." This presentation will discuss the key principles of ambiguous loss, and family stressors where AL has been linked. It will also provide an overview of the presenter's research, and the main themes identified through her interviews with child life specialists (n=33) who reported AL in patients, parents/caregivers, siblings, and in themselves/staff. Implications for child life practice will be examined.
March 19th, 1-2pm EST
Krista Naugler, Upopolis National Program Manager
Upopolis: The Research, The Community and The Transition
Join Krista Naugler, Upopolis National Manager, as she presents the research for this online patient community and how you can use this tool to support beyond the hospital walls.
March 19th, 1-2pm EST
Krista Naugler, Upopolis National Program Manager
Child Life Month Feature- Upopolis: The Research, The Community and The Transition
Join Upedia for a free webinar in celebration of Child Life Month. Krista will share research related to online patient communities, discuss how Upopolis both the community and programming has evolved over 15+ years, and explore with the audience what Upopolis has to offer youth today.
March 25th, 12-1pm EST
Trish Tutton
1-Love your work; lose the burnout
Happy Child Life Month! How do you continue to do work you LOVE, without feeling overwhelmed, dysregulated, pre-irritated and stretched thin? Burnout in North America is at record levels: 66% of U.S. employees and 39% of Canadian workers experienced burnout in 2025 - we can’t do our best work this way. In this webinar, Trish introduces simple, quick, and science-backed tools to build resilience and reduce stress — without quitting your job, adding 30 minutes to your busy day, or retreating to a mountain cave. You’ll explore your relationship with stress, challenge the success-at-all-costs mindset, and learn low-maintenance mindfulness strategies to use even in the middle of a busy shift or high-stakes meeting. This session is ideal for high-stress, service-driven teams — educators, healthcare workers, nonprofit professionals, and anyone who’s great at helping others but struggles to help themselves. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Discover how to turn down the volume on mental stress so you can feel calm and present even in moments of chaos and stress. Develop response strategies to emotionally charged situations instead of reacting out of stress. Get practical strategies to develop sustainable mental and emotional capacity. Leave feeling empowered to take control of your stress response so you can reduce burnout.
Recording 2021
Jo-Anne Robertson MPH
Keeping the Babies in Mind; Infant Mental Health and Child Life
This webinar will review of the fascinating topics of infant mental health and early brain development. Child life professionals working with infants, toddlers and preschoolers will have the opportunity to consider implications of these concepts in their practice. Video examples, time for questions and answers, and opportunities for reflection will be provided. Jo-Anne Robertson MPH, is a former certified child life specialist who worked in both the USA and Canada with chronically ill children of all ages. Later she began therapeutic work in the community with young and vulnerable families and their preschool children. After receiving her Master's of Public Health with a focus on early child development as a social determinant of health, she has been able to pursue her passions of infant mental health and optimal early child development at a population level.
Recording 2022
Dr. Christine Wekerle
Child Maltreatment and Resilience Journey
This presentation will provide participants with: 1. an overview of definitions and prevalence of child maltreatment; 2. signs of maltreatment; 3. important factors in the assessment of child maltreatment and; 4. factors promoting day-to-day resilience in maltreated youth.
Recording 2022
Erinn Pinard, MSc. CCLS, CYC and Akila Dada, CCLS, OCT, MSc. Candidate
Mental Health Matters: Spotlighting the Role of Child Life Services; supporting children and youth living with eating disorders
This webinar explores the perfect storm created between Covid-19 and a rising eating disorder population. Two Child Life Specialists will reflect on their patient population, changing role, creative interventions and daily activities that showcase a unique skill set of Child Life Specialists within a Children’s Hospital.
