Carolyn Kelly Play Therapy

About

Carolyn Kelly Play Therapy Services offers Play and Creative Arts Therapy to children from 4-18 years of age.

Play Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses play and creative arts to help children deal with emotional and mental health issues. Play is the natural form of self-expression for children and children to learn, communicate and develop their personalities, without feeling interrogated or threatened.

The environment of the therapy playroom provides a space that is free from outside interference and has as few limits as possible, but as many as necessary (for safety). In this accepting therapeutic space, children can safely explore, express and process their feelings at their own pace.

The creative equipment within the play therapist's toolkit unlocks the potential in children through the creation of metaphor. The play therapy process also promotes the production of opioids and oxytocin in the brain, empowering children to seek solutions that help them cope with problems in their lives.

The outcomes of Play and Creative Arts Therapy can include a general reduction in anxiety, and raised self-esteem, or a change in specific difficult behaviours, and improved relations with family and friends. Children may also learn to manage relationships and conflicts in more appropriate ways.

Play Therapy is a gentle yet incredibly powerful process that helps children experiencing difficulties to help themselves.

Play Therapy is an appropriate intervention for children with moderate to severe and complex difficulties due to:

- Finding it difficult to concentrate or learn
- Being excluded or being at risk of exclusion from school
- Finding it difficult to make and/or keep friends
- Having nightmares and/or disturbed sleep/bed-wetting
- Having suffered trauma and/or abuse
- Experiencing divorce/separation/loss/bereavement
- Experiencing domestic abuse/violence
- Having ADHD/ODD/ASD/OCD/Asperger's or autistic traits and/or tendencies
- Being ill/having a disability/being a carer
- Refusing to go out and/or go to school
- Quarrelling with peers and/or siblings
- Bullying or being bullied
- Displaying inappropriate behaviours
- Suffering anxiety, stress or phobias
- Being withdrawn or unhappy
- Being unable/unwilling to play
- Self harming/eating disorders
- Being adopted or fostered
- Controlling and/or aggressive behaviour/anger

I am an experienced Accredited Play & Creative Arts Therapist. I have a particular speciality in autism and other neurodevelopmental divergency, having undertaken training as a Certified AutPlay® Therapy Provider (Aut as in autism).

Carolyn Kelly BA (Hons), PGDip (Distinction), MPTUK (Play Therapy UK)
Accredited Play & Creative Arts Therapist
Certified AutPlay® Therapy Provider
Certificate in Counselling Children and Young People (L2)
Trainee Creative Clinical Supervisor
Assistant Course Director with The Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy (APAC)
Associate Tutor at Leeds Beckett University.

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