Social Work Fellowship | Overview
Application deadline: March 1, 2025
The Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), the pediatric palliative care service at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is offering a full-time, year-long social work fellowship (July 2024 to June 2025). The PACT Social Work Fellowship seeks to provide subspecialty practice and education to future practitioners and leaders in the field of pediatric palliative care.
PACT is an interprofessional team that supports the treatment of underlying illness while maximizing the quality of life in children with serious medical conditions. Through a family-centered approach, PACT promotes healing, comfort, and making childhood experiences meaningful. The team includes physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, and social workers, and works closely with chaplains, communication specialists, psychologists, child life specialists, and numerous other therapeutic and psychosocial providers.
PACT provides inpatient and outpatient care as well as support in the community and home settings. The fellow functions as part of an interprofessional team and is responsible for consultation with other medical providers. The fellowship experience includes academic opportunities such as grand rounds, a quality improvement project, and small group teaching.
As the premier pediatric palliative care social work fellowship in the country, this unique training program provides the opportunity to participate in an intensive clinical and didactic training experience. The fellow will work closely with our medical and nurse practitioner fellows, and will receive social work-specific and interprofessional palliative care training. The fellow will have the opportunity to work with patients and their families as well as facilitate and administer the PACT bereavement program, including a parent bereavement group. There will be opportunities to gain knowledge and experience with related community resources, hospice, and bereavement services.
Fellows receive weekly supervision and will work very closely with social work and interprofessional mentors dedicated to the training and support of interdisciplinary fellows. The fellow will have the opportunity to attend PACT educational rounds featuring interprofessional experts in the field of pediatric palliative care and will participate in the nationally recognized Harvard Medical School Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship Program.
The PACT Social Work Fellowship is designed for candidates with a serious interest in the field of pediatric palliative care. It seeks to train the next generation of palliative care subspecialty clinician leaders. Experience in pediatrics, hospital-based work, complex and chronic illness, and/or related fields is preferred. As relentless as we are in our mission to reduce the burden of serious illness for all, we are equally committed to diversifying our faculty, staff, and trainees. Serious and life-threatening illnesses know no boundaries and, when it comes to hiring the most dedicated and diverse professionals, neither do we. If working in this kind of organization and team inspires you, we encourage you to apply. This is an opportunity to work with one of the first and most established pediatric palliative care teams in the country.
Compensation is full-time salary plus benefits as an entry-level, post-graduate social worker.
- To apply for this fellowship, please submit the following materials to PACTSWFellowship@childrens.harvard.edu:
- Resume
- Graduate school transcript
- Three to five professional letters of reference
- One- to two-page discussion of your professional history and goals
- Your letter of interest, letters of recommendations, resume, and school transcript to PACTSWFellowship@childrens.harvard.edu.
- Submit materials together as a single PDF file if possible.
- Application PDF files should be named according to the following convention: LastName.FirstName.PACTFellowship