Mustard Seed - Play Therapy
Mustard Seed – The Power of Play
Mustard Seed Autism Trust is a local charity working with families with autistic children. We provide professional support, therapy and training.
When working with families we sometimes signpost to private play therapists but this is often too costly for many families in our community and so our project – “The Power of Play” – enabled us to employ a qualified play therapist to provide specialist support to autistic children and young people with complex emotional and mental health difficulties. We were thrilled to be funded and be able to have a positive impact on local families.
C was in his final year of primary school. His anxiety during the lockdowns had worsened dramatically and he was engaging in self harm and refusing to leave the house. We organised for the play therapist to start some sessions with him. Slowly his confidence improved and he was able to complete his last term of primary school and has had a positive transition to secondary school.
Here is some feedback from his parents:
“Julia has been wonderful for C. At his lowest time we had the support of play therapy offered by Mustard Seed. Play therapy has made an enormous difference to C’s mood, self-esteem and confidence, and Julia is always available to listen and provide support and advice when needed. Honestly, a game changer!”
You can find further information on our project and progress in the drop down boxes below, and a film we have recently made about our work and the impact of the innovation funding here.
We are always open to working more closely with local organisations who support young people and would love to link with other organisations who are able to support those who are not digitally confident or who perhaps don’t have equipment to allow them to access on line resources. You can contact us through our social media or website linked below.
Click here to visit our website
Twitter @MustardAutism
The 2021 “Power of Play” project was the natural next step for our organisation, building on our current provision but why did we feel strongly it was needed?
For autistic young people the pandemic had added additional anxiety and stress around:
- fears of getting ill (resulting in additional OCD behaviours)
- changes in rules and guidance - unpredictability
- difficulties doing school work at home (and keeping up with peers)
- returning to potentially new teachers/rooms/peers/schools
- changes in school routines as schools adapt to keep children and staff safe
- a long period with a lack of social interaction (and the impact of this on return to school)
- managing potential trauma/bereavement/safeguarding issues
Some children whose mental health has been adversely impacted by Covid19 have suffered debilitating anxiety and depression, self-harm, violent and suicidal behaviours.
During Play Therapy a child can use toys and creative activities to express their emotions. Working at their own pace the child starts to make sense of their emotions or the situation they are struggling with. By being able to offer this service through our own charity it enhances our service and is a life line to families and young people who perhaps wouldn’t be able to access this therapy otherwise.
At the time of writing 10 children and young people have received support through the power of play project to date and the feedback has been excellent. Some have had support with the transition to secondary school, some with general emotional and mental wellbeing, 4 have received therapy to help with grief and/or trauma and 3 new children will start 1-1 sessions in January.
Staff will be working with the play therapist in the future to develop the Child Parent Relationship Training course ready for families to attend later in the spring of 2022.
Through the Innovation Fund we have been able to meet with and strengthen our relationship with another local charity Headroom. They have very kindly shared their evaluation methods with us and we are looking at adapting our own to capture a better picture of our impact.
In September 2021 we opened our waiting list to new referrals. We aim to do this twice a year, taking on about 50 new families each time. In previous years it has taken two weeks to fill the 50 spaces so we encourage parents to respond quickly when we open. This September we received over 60 requests for support in the first two hours and had to close the waiting list by 11am!
We set up an advice line in January 2021 in response to Covid19 for those families not on our waiting list and have provided support to 68 families through this. We have also set up a resources hub on our website and are doubling the number of visitors to the site every quarter.
We are very conscious that we are a tiny staff team and the demand for our service is continuing to escalate so if you would like to help us in anyway please do get involved and contact us through the methods above.