Today's episode is with Emma Kaye, a qualified play therapist working in the south-east of England. Emma's experience is within special educational needs with her specialism being autism. Emma worked for over twenty-five years within education and as a teacher for over twenty years. Emma now has her own business offering play therapy on a 1:1, or group basis. Emma runs various online classes and workshops for professionals and parents with her most popular sessions being around autism and sensory needs. You can connect with Emma using the following details:
Emma's website - https://www.thesendtrainer.co.uk/
Emma's Instagram - @thesendtrainer
Emma's Facebook- @thesendtrainer
So what is play therapy?
According to Goodtherapy, play therapy can help individuals communicate, explore repressed thoughts and emotions, address unresolved trauma, and experience personal growth and is widely viewed as an important, effective, and developmentally appropriate mental health treatment. (Goodtherapy.org, 2020).
During my chat with Emma, we discuss various ways to engage a child using play therapy from using stories to puppets! I was keen to discover the relationship between OT and play therapy and although there is huge potential for this multiagency paring it seems from Emma's experience this is yet to be the norm, and although Emma has worked with the same group of children or individual child that an OT has on their caseload it was very much working separately. Maybe that could be, something to think about, take away and reflect upon possibly even change as both Emma and I felt that a more blended multidisciplinary approach between play therapist and occupational therapist could benefit the children worked with. If you have experience of this please do let me know I'd be super interested to hear how this went and worked out!
This weeks recommendation by Emma
Book ~ The out of sync child has fun by Carol Stock Kranowitz link to website - https://out-of-sync-child.com/books/the-out-of-sync-child-has-fun-activities-for-kids-with-spd/
Sensory strategies ~ Laurie, C. (2014) Sensory Strategies London: The National Autistic Society
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