Services for Childen and Young People

Play has been recognized by philosophers over the span of time as a powerful agent of growth and change. Play relieves stress, enhances connections in relationships, stimulates creative expression and exploration, and helps us regulate our emotions. 

In play therapy the toys in the play room are the child’s words and the play itself is the child’s language. Play therapists are trained to understand the language of play. Play Therapists use play therapy in a strategic way to assist children in the process of expressing whatever may be bothering them through the play.

 Research shows that play therapy is indeed effective for children experiencing a wide range of challenges that range across the realm of social, emotional, and behavioural issues. Children facing life stressors and major transitions are able to heal, integrate and grow in the play room with a trained Play Therapist.

 

There are different approaches to play therapy from pure child centred play therapy which is non-directive to the other end of the spectrum in which therapist use very directive interventions with specific aims in session. Regardless of approach, all play therapy helps therapists to connect to the child through play-based activities and experience.

5 things to help parents understand how and why play therapy works: 

1. Play is the natural language for children through which they explore, express and experience. We are trained in knowing how to meet them there and speak their language so we can understand what is happening for them that they may otherwise not be able to express verbally

 2. Children act out what is bothering them metaphorically in their play. We know how to see these metaphors and we know how to facilitate experiences in the play room that help children naturally resolve what is bothering them.

3. Play therapy has been shown by research to be the most effective way to connect with children therapeutically and provide them a means to heal and grow.

4. Play is a natural stress reliever. When children get to play, they are able to release stress, and this helps them regulate their emotions.

5. Play is a way for children to bond and connect with others. Play IS the WAY children explore, experience and express naturally!

AutPlay Therapy was created by Dr. Robert Jason Grant and is a play therapy approach to. It combines the therapeutic powers of play therapy and relationship development approaches together in a collaborative model to assist children and adolescents in gaining needed skills and abilities.

 AutPlay Therapy is an integrative family play therapy approach incorporating a parent training component which values parents as co-change agents and teaches parents how to implement structured play times and structured play therapy interventions at home. Parents learn the procedures and techniques and are shown how to implement interventions at home to increase skill and ability levels in their child. AutPlay Therapy involves both the child and the parent in the therapeutic process and uses a play therapy base that is not only a natural language of the child but enables the parent to be involved with their child in a way that teaches skills and increases abilities within a positive and connecting process.

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AutPlay Therapy has Shown Effective Treatment Outcomes for the Following Areas:

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Increasing Emotional Regulation Ability

Improving Social Skills and Functioning

Improving Relationship Development and Connection

Reducing Anxiety Levels

Improving Sensory Processing Challenges

Increasing Concentration, Focus, and Attention

Improving the Parent/Child Relationship

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Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) is a therapeutic approach that combines ideas from attachment theory and sensory processing/integration. It is often used with children (and sometimes adults) who have experienced early trauma, neglect, attachment difficulties, emotional dysregulation, or sensory processing challenges.

Core idea

SAI proposes that a person's ability to regulate emotions and feel safe in relationships is closely linked to how their nervous system processes sensory information. Early adverse experiences may leave someone in a persistent "survival" state (fight, flight, freeze, or dissociation), making it harder to manage emotions, attention, behaviour, and relationships.

How it works

The intervention focuses on:

• Co-regulation: helping a child regulate emotions through supportive interactions with a trusted adult.

• Sensory strategies: using carefully selected sensory activities (movement, touch, deep pressure, rhythm, etc.) to help the nervous system become more regulated.

• Attachment-focused relationships: strengthening feelings of safety, trust, and connection between the child and caregivers.

• Developing self-regulation: gradually helping the child recognize and manage their own emotional and sensory states.

Goals of SAI

The aims typically include:

• Improving emotional regulation.

• Reducing anxiety, hypervigilance, or overwhelm.

• Enhancing a sense of safety and security.

• Supporting positive parent–child or caregiver–child relationships.

• Improving participation in learning, play, and daily activities.

What is SMART?

• Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment

• an innovative mental health therapy for children and adolescents for whom regulation of emotional and interpersonal life is a primary problem.

What does SMART do?

• utilizes an array of therapeutic equipment, such as weighted blankets, balance beams, fitness balls, mini trampolines, swings, large cushions, and shared play to support children’s natural ways of regulating their bodies and their emotions, facilitate attachment-building and allow for embodied processing of traumatic experiences.

• blends movement and relationship to regulate arousal states and powerful affect, thereby, engaging the subcortical, cortical, and attachment neural pathways to increase behavioural and psychological integration.

• widens the child’s window of tolerance for both positive and negative emotional states, and for interpersonal connection so that healthy development can proceed.

What makes SMART Different?

• does not rely on language and awareness as an entry point. A coherent narrative and cognitive understanding emerge as a result of fully embodied play engaging the sensory, motor, limbic, and arousal systems for self-exploration.

• engages the sensory motor systems, especially the vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile sensory systems for emotional, psychological, and relational regulation and repair.

• follows the child’s lead while tending to safety, uses full body participatory play with the child, to work with the unfolding process in real time in session as the path to developing new skills and processing traumatic experience.

The Safe and Sound Protocol is an evidence-based intensive listening programme aimed at those with anxiety, social communication difficulties and trauma that has been developed as a result of over four decades of peer reviewed research, based on Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory. Music is played through over-ear headphones, which has been specially filtered in order to gradually expose the auditory system to different sound frequencies. It works by stimulating the facial and vagus nerves and helping the autonomic nervous system to regulate, improving concentration and social engagement. Safe and Sound Protocol is the only auditory intervention that directly retunes and regulates autonomic state, moving a person out of fight/flight/freeze and into a rest and digest/parasympathetic state. When faced with what the body perceives as threats or danger, it responds by re-tuning the nervous system into states of defense – either “fight or flight” (sympathetic) or “freeze” (dorsal vagal). The brain and body’s first priority is to keep us alive. When the nervous system remains in a chronic state of defense, it affects both the mind and body – impacting how we feel, think, and connect with others. This can adversely affect our health and day-to-day experience in the world. A proven solution is to look from the bottom up. In addition to acute, repetitive, complex and developmental trauma, the Safe and Sound Protocol has been proven to help the following difficulties and challenges:

Social and emotional difficulties

Auditory sensitivities

Auditory processing difficulties

Anxiety and trauma related challenges Inattention Stressors that impact social engagement