Play Therapy Insights into Everyday Social Pedagogical Practice in Residential Child Care

Social pedagogy has often approached psychotherapy as a separate forms of practice, the former being seen as a meeting between therapist and client in a “therapeutic space” separated out from daily life and activities, while social pedagogy helps and supports in close proximity to everyday life in what is regarded as the person’s home.

In UK residential child care there has often been the discussion that there is another way of seeing the relationship, as a collaboration of highly developed relational, emotional, and reflective skills.

In a case example studying a Danish children’s home the authors argue that when designed and carried out as an integrated part of everyday social pedagogical practice, play therapy can support practitioners in integrating a reflective and conscious approach to understanding and meeting the children’s emotional and relational needs with the ability to create and enter into “playful encounters” with the children. This collaborative practice is how many UK practitioners see their residential child care tradition.