Play & Filial Therapy

12/08/2026

Dr Kate Renshaw is featured in a new podcast series from Toy Libraries Australia called The Toy Library Effect! In Episode 3, “Toy Libraries as an Extension of Therapy,” host Penny Johnston brought together myself, Cassie Doyle (OT), Nicole Pates (Physio), Alice Crook (Speech Pathology) and Dr Brian H***e (OT) to talk about how everyday play through toy libraries can support kids’ development and take some pressure off families.

Give it a listen if you’re a parent, educator or clinician curious about the power of accessible play.

Link below 👇🏼

Explore how toy libraries help reduce pressure on families, support child-led development and create opportunities for connection.

11/08/2026

10/08/2026

A 2021 systematic review quietly admitted something important for psychotherapists working with young children.

TF-CBT, one of the most widely used trauma treatments for children, doesn’t meet “well-established” evidence criteria once you look specifically at preschoolers (ages 3–6). It scrapes in at “probably efficacious,” and the reviewers’ own data tells you why: young children in these studies consistently struggled with the treatment’s core tasks, recognising emotional states, sitting through psychoeducation, tolerating exposure exercises.

The review’s answer is “additional scaffolding.” I’d argue that’s not developmentally sensitive framing. Those tasks aren’t peripheral to TF-CBT, they’re the treatment itself. If a model’s foundations are consistently out of reach for an age group, that’s not something you scaffold your way around. It’s a sign the model wasn’t built for that developmental stage in the first place.

Even where the review cites play (Cavett & Drewes, 2012, a CBT-aligned play therapy source), it’s framed narrowly as a delivery vehicle for CBT content, never as a mechanism of change in its own right.

Preschoolers don’t need more scaffolding bolted onto an adult-shaped model. They need an approach built for the developmental stage they’re actually in.

Full breakdown in the carousel. Source: McGuire, Steele & Singh (2021), Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.

10/08/2026

There’s something quietly magical in this quote (from Childhood and Society, 1950). It’s shaped how I think about play therapy and filial work.

When a child plays, they’re moving forward, building mastery, working through what they don’t yet have words for. When an adult plays alongside them, we’re stepping sideways into their world, entering their reality rather than directing it.

That shift, from leading to joining, is at the heart of filial and play therapy. It’s why the parent-child relationship and the therapist-child relationship themselves become the vehicle for healing, not just the toys in the room.

Erik Erikson was writing about the developmental power of play as early as 1937, and returned to it decades later in Toys and Reasons (1977), tracing how childhood play shapes the rituals and worldviews we carry into adulthood.

10/08/2026

On local radio today, sharing what I brought to a recent Community Safety Forum in Sebastopol.

We talked family violence as the most prevalent crime in the state, drug offences up 36%, and why prevention has to start in the first five years of a child’s life.

We also talked about how A.I. developed intelligence from…PLAY!

🎧 Catch the full chat on the https://www.playandfilialtherapy.com/projects-6



3BA 102.3 FM

09/08/2026

DfE just reviewed 73 systematic reviews on supporting SEMH and autistic pupils in mainstream schools. Play therapy wasn’t excluded from the findings, it was excluded from the review’s scope.

Swipe through for what the review actually found, where it maps onto tiered models like MTSS, and what UK government needs to commission next to close the Tier 3 gap.

📄 Full review: Department for Education (2026). Behavioural and social communication interventions for children and young people with SEMH and autism: a rapid evidence review.

🔗https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a574ce26d6d5c7e2845c98c/Behavioural_and_social_communication_interventions_for_children_and_young_people_with_SEMH_and_autism_-_rapid_evidence_review.pdf

08/08/2026

For those of us working with children and families, this is a useful piece of evidence to have on hand.

A 2026 systematic review in Trauma, Violence & Abuse examined 30 studies on Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and their relationship to outcomes in children and adolescents. Higher PCEs were associated with reduced depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation, improved academic outcomes, stronger future orientation and adult functioning, and some improvements in physical health. The relationship with behavioral outcomes was more mixed, and the authors call for further research with more diverse samples.

For practitioners, educators and anyone working in child and adolescent wellbeing, this adds to a growing evidence base for why building PCEs deserves the same investment as addressing adversity.

Full study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380251320978

Citation: Sousa et al. (2026), Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 27(3), 527–541.

08/08/2026

Kinda chic, play therapist edition 💛

A few small (and not so small) things that make this work feel good, from the playroom to the backyard.

06/08/2026

02/08/2026

A child pauses, looks at the shelf, and picks. Not what I would have picked. Not what makes sense to anyone but them.

That pause matters, but it’s not the whole story. The whole session, the whole room, is the transitional space.

Winnicott called it that: a suspended place between imagination and reality, where a child gets to try being someone new, safely, on their own terms. Not just in one choice, but across the whole process.

And control is central to that. Children can’t control much of what happens to them outside the playroom. Inside it, control and agency is returned, session by session, choice by choice.