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Certificate in Therapeutic Playwork
Venue: Tír na nÓg, Slievenagorta, Ballymore, Co Westmeath
Cost: €1,600 in total

The Certificate in Therapeutic Playwork is a modular training designed for a wide range of practitioners in child-care, education, health and social services including child-care workers, project workers, occupational therapists, creative arts therapists, play therapists, nurses, classroom and special needs assistants, pre-school teachers, day care staff, staff in special needs settings (day care or residential units), anyone wishing to work oversees as a volunteer in developing countries or disaster areas, and for anyone wishing to work creatively with children or vulnerable adults.

Participants are required to attend 3, chosen to meet their specific needs, interests and circumstances, of the 4 core courses that are repeated regularly:

• Summer School: Creative Play, Drama, and Storytelling (5 Days)
• Play and The Expressive Arts (5 Days)
• Therapeutic Work with Children: The Power of Play course (5 Days)
• Creative Care Course (6 Days)

This course will equip participants to work with children and vulnerable adults utilising a broad range of therapeutic skills and media. The core trainers are Dr Sue Jennings and Eileen Prendiville, both are IBECPT Accredited teaching Professors so all training hours will automatically qualify for CPD points with IBECPT (The International Board of Examiners of Certified Child and Play Therapists).

Summer School (Different theme each year)

The Summer School runs for 5 days in early July and covers Creative Play, Drama and Storytelling for children and vulnerable adults. You will experience play, drama, movement, music and dance and a range of non-verbal methods to encourage withdrawn people and contain the most active. We shall include sensory play and work with body self and image, as well as many drama games. We shall explore techniques to 'free our play' so that we can 'free play'. Play leads into drama through many drama games, and the dramatic play and drama gives shape and form to our experiences. We shall make masks a part of our drama work.

You will learn projective methods for all abilities and ages. We shall include collage work and painting, clay and modelling, dramatic play and theatre in order to create an inclusive practice. We shall explore old and new stories in dramatic form and create a nurturing environment through storytelling. Stories can be built in many ways including through collage, paint, clay and modelling. We will learn techniques for structuring stories, and will create stories through puppet work and learn basic puppet making techniques. We shall develop non-invasive techniques for evoking children's individual stories through verbal and non-verbal methods. Participants will gain a wide range of techniques and a rationale for their safe application.

Play and the Expressive Arts

This workshop runs every July for 5 days, the week following the Summer School to facilitate those who wish to attend a block of training. It provides a unique opportunity, using the creative arts therapies to find new, creative and non-verbal, ways to relate and engage with clients of all ages. We will experience Movement, Art, Drama, Music, Sandplay, and Play Therapy, with fully qualified practitioners, to journey into your inner world to access, and liberate, your own creative core.

This course is designed to introduce you to the creative arts in an experiential way. You will leave with a 'tool-kit' of skills and an awareness of the creative arts that will enable you to engage with clients of all ages in new and innovative ways rather than relying on spoken language. Deeper relationships will almost certainly ensue as communication skills become more developed and understanding grows. This will be of particular value to those who work with children and young people, traumatised adults, and clients with special needs. Resistant clients, including disengaged youth, respond well to these media.

Therapeutic Work with Children: The Power of Play

Therapeutic Work with Children: The Power of Play Course runs once or twice each year for 5 days. This is an experiential training that will help anyone who works with children gain a personal understanding of how play therapy and therapeutic play works, the safety and boundary issues to consider, develop skills, and explore ways to ensure that their work with children, in whatever setting and whatever the child's difficulties, has the potential to become therapeutic. Participants will experience a range of child centred and play based interventions for themselves. We will utilise and explore the use of non-directive play therapy, therapeutic play, creative techniques, therapeutic stories, sand play therapy, story-making techniques, ritual, music, art and physical activities to connect with core, unconscious processes and facilitate healing in a safe, supportive environment. This will empower participants to approach their young clients, in whatever setting, from a new place where relationships will be more meaningful, empathy is truly possible and the approach more child centred.

The Creative Care Course runs every February, and has three two day modules:

Play and Attachment - Working with Pre-school Children and Clients with Special Needs

Play and sensory development is the core of this module and we discover how messy play is essential for learning bodily control and boundaries. We shall learn about playful parenting and play with newborn babies and toddlers and its beginnings during pregnancy.

The developmental sequence of embodiment-projection-role demonstrates how we can both observe and structure play development. We will address the importance of play with young children, clients with special needs, and institutionalised clients.

Cross Cultural Play and Creative Activities - Working with International Children

Essential skills for NGO volunteers working in disaster areas and with International children in Ireland and abroad. We take a human-rights based approach in creating play and storytelling especially for situations where therapeutic play is still to be discovered. We shall work with identity through play for newly arrived immigrant children and their families and the impact of sudden change on their feelings of safety and security. We shall work with identity through play for newly arrived immigrant children and their families and the impact of sudden change and trauma.

Developing Therapeutic Play Skills - Storytelling and Dramatic Play

This module develops participants' skills in recognising the child's play development stage and introducing appropriate play activities. This course addresses several ways to enable us to facilitate children's holistic development, and assist them in overcoming difficulties, utilising play, in a variety of care settings. We shall look at personal expression through stories and puppetry. We shall develop skills in using puppets for storytelling and drama, and include the importance of social play and nature play.

We will also address the importance of play in the life of clients with learning difficulties and developmental delays, linking the needs of the individual clients to the developmental stages at which they are currently functioning.

Further information on this course is in the Course Details, which you can download by clicking below. To apply, download the application form below, complete, and return to CTC.