Pondering Play and Therapy Podcast

Julie interviews play therapist and social work lecturer Pete Ayling about how playfulness supports understanding, empathy, and perspective-taking for children and adults. Pete describes his roles teaching social work students, supervising play therapists, and quality-assuring UK play therapy training, and reflects on play in his life through relationships, arts, nature, and identity exploration. They discuss play as symbolic representation that can loosen thinking when experiences are hard to verbalise, and emphasise embodied awareness as a key lens for emotion and connection. Pete explains his PhD on empathy in children and family social work, using Lowenfeld-style sand trays in interviews with social workers to elicit titles, narratives, and emotional insights; some participants processed distressing events during interviews. He concludes that sustaining empathy requires both individual agency and supportive organisational cultures, especially through emotionally literate supervision and informal networks.

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Philippa interviews Lee Smith, a mental health nurse with 30 years’ experience in Tier 4 inpatient children’s services, whose NHS roles included ward management, clinical specialist and consultant posts. Lee describes entering nursing via an interest in psychology, working in forensic CAMHS, and helping rehabilitate highly detained young people through structured leave and relationship-based work. He explains CAMHS tiers 1–4, the emergence of psychiatric intensive care units, and how detention under the Mental Health Act operates. Lee and his late wife Beverly Cyrus founded Cove Care (2008–2025), a specialist residential step-down service integrating mental health and social care, supporting about 300 young people with high staffing ratios and clinical input to prevent readmission. He discusses “contamination” and institutionalisation, the value of creative therapies and play, and a patented flexible inpatient unit design with integrated pathways. After Beverly’s death in 2023, Lee sold Cove to ResiCare Alliance in 2025 and now consults in the West Midlands.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-smith-a143926a/

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In this episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, host Philippa interviews Dr. Lisa Cherry—author, speaker, researcher, and consultant—about trauma, adversity, attachment, and compassionate responses to behavior. Cherry shares how her childhood experiences of trauma, being in care, emotional neglect, school exclusion, and homelessness shaped her commitment to social justice and a career spanning residential care, leaving-care teams, education, and independent work. She discusses sustaining oneself through rest and boundaries to avoid feeling “trauma-drenched,” and distinguishes trauma-aware from trauma-informed practice, emphasizing systemic support for staff. Cherry introduces a framework of belonging, mattering, and liminality, arguing people in “in-between” transitions need to be held to prevent destructive targeting and exploitation. She describes what trauma-informed relationships feel like—safety and acceptance—and reflects on challenges in schools. She also highlights her books, including Squirrel’s Search For Love, written during her multiple myeloma diagnosis, and upcoming titles on belonging and children entering care.

About Dr Lisa Cherry | Discover Trauma-Informed Solutions

2027 conference - https://www.lisacherry.co.uk/conference-2027

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In this episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, the hosts discuss how “mistakes” in therapeutic work never fully go away and are better understood as learning opportunities. They reflect on recent examples of making unhelpful assumptions in play therapy sessions and meetings with parents, including using materials that were too dysregulating and shortcutting families’ stories due to time pressure and experience-based bias. They explore the value of consistency in the play therapy room, the importance of deep listening and allowing families to define their own truth, and the shame and guilt practitioners can feel even when clients may not notice errors. The conversation also covers the learning curve from checklist-based practice to embodied presence, using examples like student training and learning EMDR, and ends by emphasising reflection, self-forgiveness, and repair after misattunement.

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Host Julie interviews Glasgow-based play therapist and With Kids trainer Jeanne McLaughlin about children’s play involving death, dying, and violent themes, based on McLaughlin’s workshop “How to Die Well in the Playroom.” McLaughlin shares her career path into play therapy, With Kids’ work in schools and its MSc training with Queen Margaret University, and why she avoids the term “aggressive play,” reframing it as high-energy play linked to underdeveloped sensory and regulation systems. She describes how children can self-regulate and negotiate rules (e.g., sword-fighting), how reduced free play and adult intervention affect children, and how therapists/parents should set clear, shame-free boundaries based on tolerance and triggers. They discuss literal vs metaphorical “deaths” in play, transitional play like harming baby dolls, play as regulation even in adversity, and the importance of grounding and transitioning children out of intense play at session end.

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Margot Sunderland joins Philippa in this weeks episode of Pondering Play and Theraplay.

The conversation explores how “burying” in sandplay can mean different things, from hiding feelings to gaining control, and emphasizes therapist curiosity about what symbols mean for each child. It contrasts direct responses (“Does this feel like something in your life?”) with indirect, metaphor-based approaches for children who cannot or will not talk about feelings, noting metaphor can be more digestible and reduce fight/flight/freeze. A supervision example describes five-year-old Ella, who witnessed domestic violence and uses Pull-Ups while carefully disposing of them; the behavior is framed as protecting her mother from dangerous feelings. A therapeutic story about a tortoise, lilies, and an angry cat models empathy and safety, inviting sandplay responses to process rage and unmet needs. The speakers discuss naming feelings, creating narrative, and training/resources offered via the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education and related books and cards.

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Philippa and Julie close the UK summer term with a Q&A episode featuring listener and play therapist Becky Webb, who shares her career path and asks about working therapeutically during family transitions and around bereavement. They discuss moving beyond blanket rules about waiting for stability or set time periods, focusing instead on assessment, goals, and providing supportive, relational therapy without necessarily doing deep trauma processing, while also supporting “big people” and other professionals around the child. They explore how to respond when children bring trauma into the room, the importance of titrating and ending sessions regulated, and using clear, shared language about death to address misunderstandings and self-blame. A listener question covers when and why sessions are recorded (training, therapy play, video analysis, ethics and confidentiality). They share practical “backup” regulation activities and announce an August break, returning the first Friday of September.

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Julie hosts Simon Kerr-Edwards on Pondering Play and Therapy to discuss clinical supervision for therapists and school staff, plus Simon’s parent consultations. Simon, a Buckinghamshire-based practitioner, describes training first as a drama therapist, later completing a play therapy master’s at Roehampton after meeting Anne Cattanach, and moving from local authority and CAMHS work into independent practice. They explore why supervision is essential, how it differs from personal therapy, and how supervisors are themselves contained through their own supervision. Simon outlines Hewson and Carroll’s “six supervisory spaces” model: sitting room, studio, observatory, plus office, lecture theatre, and exam room, and warns against the “manager’s office” and “cellar” of control and shame. He also describes structured supervision in schools to improve reflective practice, and parent consultations focused on nonjudgmental listening, confidence, and differing parenting styles.

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In this episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, Philippa interviews Matt Wesson, former president of EMDR Association UK, EMDR Europe senior accredited trainer/consultant, and BABCP-accredited CBT therapist with 30 years’ mental health experience across the military, NHS, industry, and private practice. Matt explains EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) as an eight-phase psychotherapy developed for PTSD and now used for wider issues (e.g., phobias, social anxiety, depression linked to bullying), noting eye movements are a key component but can be replaced with tapping, buzzers, or audio when needed. He describes his path from Royal Navy weapons engineer to Defence Mental Health Services, then private practice, EMDR training/teaching via the EMDR Academy, and current NHS forensic work in outpatient services and a Category B prison. He outlines practical challenges of prison therapy, EMDR phases (history/formulation, preparation, assessment/activation, desensitisation), and how to find EMDR via NHS talking therapies, EMDR Association UK, or private care.

https://www.emdracademy.co.uk/

https://emdrassociation.org.uk/

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