What Is Play Therapy?
... toys are the child's words!

Play Therapy is a mode of therapy that helps children and adolescents to explore their feelings, to express themselves and to make sense of their life experiences. Conventional talking therapies may be inappropriate for children and young people who struggle to find the words to describe complex feelings.
 
Initially developed in the turn of the 20th century, today play therapy refers to a large number of treatment methods, all applying the therapeutic benefits of play. Play therapy differs from regular play in that the therapist helps children to address and resolve their own problems. Play therapy builds on the natural way that children learn about themselves and their relationships in the world around them.
 
How Will Play Therapy Benefit A Child?

Play therapy is implemented as a treatment of choice in mental health, school, agency, developmental, hospital, residential, and recreational settings, with clients of all ages.
 
Play therapy helps children:
  • Become more responsible for behaviors and develop more successful strategies.
  • Develop new and creative solutions to problems.
  • Develop respect and acceptance of self and others.
  • Learn to experience and express emotion.
  • Cultivate empathy and respect for thoughts and feelings of others.
  • Learn new social skills and relational skills with family.
  • Develop self-efficacy and thus a better assuredness about their abilities.
 
What sort of child might benefit from Play Therapy?

Play Therapy may be appropriate for children who are displaying behaviours that are seen to be a problem by those who care for them: they may be withdrawn, difficult to manage or not reaching their potential in some way.
 
Play Therapy is an effective intervention for children or young people with problems such as:
  • Experience of loss through bereavement, family breakdown or separation from culture of origin
  • Children or young people who are terminally ill or disabled or who cope with carers or siblings with disabilities
  • Those who have witnessed violence or the abuse of substances
  • Experience of abuse or neglect
  • Children or young people with low self-esteem and anxiety issues
 
Play Therapy can be adapted to suit different developmental levels and is appropriate for children of all ages, but is most often used for children aged between three and twelve years. Children from different cultures, genders and abilities can all be helped by Play Therapy.
 
The Play Therapist

Play Therapists generally work with individual children but many have experience of working with groups and with siblings and/or parents and carers (filial therapy, Theraplay®).
 
Most Play Therapists are graduates who have already trained to work with children before they begin a post-graduate or masters level qualification in Play Therapy.
 
Answers to Frequent Questions
  • A child engaged in play therapy is not just playing; they are learning and experiencing self-determination, choice and self-control. Children learn about him/herself and their world through play.
  • In the process of play, a child is able to process and solve problems in their own language and own their own terms.                       
  • Toys are specifically selected in a play therapy room to help facilitate a number of emotions that adults are able to use words for. A carefully stocked and developed play therapy room is similar to what a dictionary or a rich emotional vocabulary is to an adult
  • The therapist role in play therapy is not to play with or entertain the child. Instead the play therapist is providing a warm, safe, secure and accepting relationship with the child to help facilitate the child own self-acceptance.
​Specializing in Play Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Creative & Expressive Arts and Somatic Experiencing, our team's areas of focus include:
  1. Coping with grief and loss
  2. Challenges arising from separation, divorce and familial conflicts
  3. Mental health issues eg anxiety, school refusal, depression, learning difficulties
  4. Developmental issues eg self esteem, motivation, relational difficulties, bullying, school and behavioural challenges