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As a Play Therapist for a London Borough’s
Social Services department, my principle task is to provide Play Therapy
services to ‘looked after’ children and their families and carers. The
purpose of this is to enable the child to understand what is happening to
them and to boost their resilience and self esteem through what is a
difficult and uncertain time. This means direct work with the child or
sometimes just with their carers using a mixture of directive and
non-directive techniques in order to facilitate the child’s expression of
their ‘narrative’ or story of what has happened to them.
Working with looked after children it means
that there are a lot of other professionals with whom I have to liaise in
order to build up a full picture of the child and their abilities and
difficulties and regularly meets with and talks to colleagues. Despite the
hectic nature of this task he finds it important to have time to plan,
write-up and reflect on the work he does and sharing experiences with
colleagues is invaluable. Children are usually referred when their behaviour
is of concern and hard to understand. A successful outcome is when these
behaviour concerns are lessened and the overall needs of the child are
better understood. This is evaluated by the professional team, with the
carers and most importantly with the child themselves.
I have worked with looked after children for over 20
years and have considerable experience of a wide-range of work settings. The
work is tough and challenging but the capacity for change within the
children is enormous and seeing children learn to express their thoughts and
feelings is rewarding. My background is in Drama and Drama Therapy and I was
interested in how people act out roles to express different facets of their
identity. Play Therapy seemed a natural progression when I began to work
with younger children and family groups and he saw play as an important
medium for both creativity and development of relationships. I believe
patience, persistence and resilience are important qualities needed in the
work allied with a firm understanding of my own emotional responses and how
these can inform and help me understand what the children experience. I have
come across perceptions of Play Therapy as being a fun time in which only
superficial issues can be addressed. I would like to think that ‘fun’ is a
component of what he does but that profound and meaningful emotions and
experiences can be accessed and understood in the play therapy room as
well. |