We say Goodbye and Thank-you to HPS Jacqueline Youens who has retired after 32 years as Health Play Specialist.
Jackie Youens trained at Basingstoke, before starting her HPS career at Wycombe General Hospital in a newly created HPS post in Outpatients and the community. Based in a new Paediatric Outpatients Department, Jackie worked closely with HPS colleagues in Day Surgery and Acute Paediatrics, supporting children having bloods tests and investigations, each member of the team carrying their own caseload of individual referrals. During her time at Wycombe, Jackie spent a year with the Child Bereavement Trust, helping to set up activity groups and research literature and resources.
In 2011, Jackie moved to St Francis at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital where she joined a multi-disciplinary team working with children and young people with life changing spinal cord injuries. Jackie remained at Stoke Mandeville for 13 years until her well-earned retirement in 2024. She writes of her time there:
“On the Spinal unit, I learned to slow down and appreciate the luxury of time to spend with children, young people and their families, learning to live with life changing injuries. I established a play service to meet all the developmental needs, working with skilled and experienced nursing and therapy professionals. Offering play, creative activities and resources to complement the rehabilitation goals was challenging, messy and fun. From practicing wheelchair skills in a cardboard Dalek covered wheelchair, observing a child express loss through a series of paintings, and enabling children to communicate and develop life skills through the simple task of baking a cake.”
Among the many highlights of Jackie’s long career, she is proud of the professional links she built with the Child Life community in America, attending three Child Life conferences and hosting annual study visits for groups of Child Life Specialist students. At Wycombe Jackie and her HPS colleagues developed a highly respected play service across Paediatrics, including a major fundraising effort for a new sensory room and playroom and establishing an individual referral programme for specific medical needs.
Reaching the conclusion of a rich and varied career, Jackie says that she feels privileged to have worked with individual children who both challenged and inspired her to find new ways of helping them with traumatic procedures, bereavement and developmental needs affected by medical issues and illness. She offers the following words of wisdom to new entrants to the profession:
“I feel it is the HPS role to make the child feel important for however long they are needing intervention or contact, whether it’s 5 minutes or longer. Communication and the ability to listen to and observe the child are vital skills, along with a sound knowledge base of child development. Understanding how play and development is affected by illness, hospital admission and trauma will help with working out the best way to help a child through a procedure or coming to terms with their prognosis. Fancy, high tech and specialised equipment is not always needed. The ability to engage a child through conversation, a story or over a simple activity such as colouring cannot be underestimated.”
In retirement, Jackie is relishing having the time to do all the things she enjoys: reading, singing, walking, café catch ups with friends, midweek mini breaks and learning to appreciate gardening and attacking the weeds. But best of all is seeing the end of early morning commutes and having no more uniforms to iron!
“One day I plan to put down on paper a record of my career with children, from washing terry nappies to remembering IT game passwords.”
Happy retirement Jackie, and thank-you for all you have given to the Health Play profession and to the children and families whose lives you have touched. We can’t wait to read that memoir!