Play Therapy for Teachers – Innerventure [Carolina Critchley]

Play & Creative Arts Therapy

In Schools

If your teachers are struggling to manage challenging behaviour in the classroom, if you are concerned about a child, or if you want to be trauma-informed with a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing, then look no further; Play Therapy is just what you need in your School.

With Universal, Targeted and Specialist services, Play Therapy can be delivered individually or in small groups, and whole-school programmes can be tailored to promote mental health and wellbeing to pupils and staff alike.

Play Therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapeutic intervention that allows children and young people access to therapeutic support that is delivered at their own level and at their own pace, without them feeling interrogated or threatened by the relationship with an adult.

Hi, I’m Carolina!

As a Play Therapist, I’m a qualified professional who will communicate with children using toys and offer them the ability to play and express themselves in a way that makes sense to them. In the process of playing, I will be helping them understand their muddled feelings and any upsetting events that they haven’t had the chance to sort out properly and that are affecting their behaviour in the classroom, impacting their ability to build healthy relationships and to fully access learning.

With toys, children will be using their own words, and by accessing all forms of play, art and drama in their purest expression, they will be using their own language to communicate their struggles, understand how some events may have impacted them, and get in touch with their own emotions to develop a sense of control and ownership of themselves in the world. In short, the child will be using their inner strength to affect the positive change they wish to see in their lives.

The outcomes of Play Therapy may be general such as a reduction in anxiety, ability to concentrate, and raised self-esteem, or more specific, such as a change in certain behaviour and improved relations with peers.

Teacher Training and Supervision will not only support your staff’s own mental health and enable them to provide a trauma-informed approach to the curriculum, but also to include both targeted and universal programmes to support your pupils’ mental-health, enabling the specialist provision to be accessed by those with deeper and more complex emotional needs.

Our experience has shown that Play Therapy in schools work because it considers and respects children and adults for who they are. Our relationship is non-judgemental and accepting of the uniqueness of each individual, and this will encourage all to find their own solutions and build upon their sense-of-self without ever changing who they truly are.

When you invite Innerventure into your School, it is not only the children who benefit; through Creative Supervision and Training you and your staff, as well as parents and the whole community will feel valued as they learn to understand what children are communicating with their behaviour, thus empowering all to provide for children’s needs accordingly so the child can get busy re-discovering the joy of living and learning.