Description: Editors: Linda A. Reddy, PhD; Tara M. Files-Hall, and Charles E. Schaefer, PhD
Empirically Based Play Interventions for Children is a compilation of innovative, well-designed play interventions, presented for the first time in one text. Play therapy is the oldest and most popular form of child therapy in clinical practice and is widely considered by practitioners to be uniquely responsive to children's developmental needs.
Play promotes normal child development and can help alleviate emotional and behavioral difficulties. Even so, play-based interventions have often been criticized for the lack of an empirical base to prove their efficacy. In an era of cost-containment, the need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of interventions is increasingly important in order to gain the general acceptance of third-party payers, mental health professionals, and consumers.
This book answers the call from professional and managed-care organizations for research-based treatment methods with proven efficacy. It describes a range of play interventions that feature flexibility in service delivery and across settings, child populations and age groups.
The editors and their contributors detail vital treatment components, including interventions that accommodate the developmental level of the child, target functional behaviors and competencies in children and parents, use psychometrically sound and clinically sensitive outcome assessments, and define successful outcomes by statistically meaningful methods.
Clinicians and researchers alike will benefit from this landmark text and will gain a fuller understanding of the key ingredients for developing future play interventions.
The following review is reprinted, with permission, from Play Therapy (Volume 3, Issue2, June 2008.
This collection of chapters by various authors highlights research that has been conducted related to play therapy. Although the quality of the content varies, there are many excellent chapters. Janine Shelby’s chapter on trauma interventions stands out in quality. While most practitioners of play therapy do not engage in formal research studies, there is great value in being able to support appropriate research based interventions. This book can prepare clinicians to justify techniques to peers, parents, and third party payers. The text will assist clinicians in understanding clients’ symbolic play at various developmental levels and stages of therapy.
Select chapters also point to ways to expand the play therapist’s realm of interventions, such as spearheading school programs for children with special needs including those demonstrating aggressive behavior and/or children with autism. Chapters also include discussions about specific programs involving symbolic play that are currently being implemented and used successfully. In addition, the reader will find preventive play interventions and well thought out programs that provide supportive scaffolding for at-risk children (Pedro-Carroll & Jones).
Play therapists are especially well prepared to help teachers and parents understand the importance and function of symbolic play. As therapists, we know intuitively that play therapy works – this book provides empirical support for our intuition.
Reviewed by Rebecca Peters, LMHC, a Wabash Valley Hospital outreach counselor in Rensselaer, IN and Becki Bowditch, LCSW, ACSW, RPT-S, clinical social worker at Heartland Clinic in Lafayette and former Indiana APT treasurer.
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Price: $59.95
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