Arthur Ellis are piloting Play Therapy! Our pilot is currently accessible to our partnerships only. Thank you for being part of this exciting development and sharing this with us.

What is Play Therapy?

Play Therapy is a form of psychotherapy primarily for children, which helps them to express themselves and work through emotional and mental issues using play as a medium. The Play Therapy we are looking to introduce will use all elements of play therapy including art therapy, music therapy, working with sand trays, puppets and arts and crafts.

Who can access Play Therapy?

This will be practiced in a 1:1 setting with children aged 4-12 years old. The structure of the therapy is that there are weekly sessions, with one initial Check In where both parent and child are present, then 12 lone sessions to follow.  One lot of a Check In and 12 sessions is called an Episode.  Sessions are 40 minutes of therapy followed by 20 minutes of administration.  There is a review at 8 weeks to see how it is going with each individual child.  We will use SDQs for impact reporting and there is always a report at the end of treatment which goes to the parent and/or referrer.

Currently group play therapy is not available. We are also currently unable to take on adopted or LAC within play therapy (talking therapy is still available to these children), which we are looking to change and broaden the scope of, March 2026.

How will sessions be delivered?

Due to the equipment required for Play Therapy, the setup of a room takes around 30 minutes. The room that this is practiced in needs to be secure, where people will not be walking in and out or through, and relatively secure in terms of sound to maintain privacy.

In order for this practice to be psychologically safe for our practitioner, we will see between 2-4 clients a day, across a School day, making the timetable for sessions (approximately) as follows:

9:00am

10:15am

11:30am

1:30pm

This of course can be adapted to suit break/lunch times etc. This leaves time for the room to be reset in between sessions as well as a lunch break. We will start this on regular Mondays with a PTUK registered, Qualified Therapeutic Play Practitioner. Our team members will see children who score 11-21 on their SDQs.

Sign me up!

If you are a client who has a provision with us, one session of Play Therapy will be the equivalent to two sessions of Talking Therapy.  For example, an Episode of Play Therapy is 13 sessions, which would be equal to 26 sessions deducted from your provision.

Please note, this will be operated on a first come first served basis. Should you have 2-4 children that you feel may benefit from this intervention and can accommodate all of the requirements above, please get in touch with us to confirm arrangements. Due to the length of an Episode, any further requests to sign up on these terms will have to wait 13 weeks until a new cycle, with new clients, to begin.

I hope this all makes sense but as always, if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to your Arthur Ellis contact, Heather Horner, our Head of Partnerships.

heather.h@arthurellismhs.com

07399 506 273