Arts Play Therapy at Park Estate School

"The arts are not an outpouring of emotion. They are a disciplined form of enquiry and expression through which we organise our feelings and ideas about experiences." - Sir Ken Robinson 

APTE (Arts & Play Therapy in Education) is a charitable trust that brings professional arts & play therapists into primary schools to support the social-emotional development of young people and offer an early intervention for children who've experienced trauma or are in distress.   

We are so lucky to have partnered with Park Estate School in Papakura, Auckland to run our initial project. This will feature a co-facilitated (led by a professional arts therapist and the school's SENCO) group therapy session for 8-10 children, and individual therapy sessions for 2 children. These will be run over 16 weeks starting mid August 2019. As well as offering direct therapy services for these children, we'll be running professional development sessions for the whole school staff team, and connecting with wh?nau. Unitec will be onboard to research this project and provide us with data that will help us to develop and evolve the program, as well as creating an evidence base we can share with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education.   

We've found funding for 90% of the cost of this project, but are now looking for the remaining 10%. All money raised goes to pay a professional therapist to run these sessions within the school and help with additional costs like supervision, the purchasing of art materials and play equipment, staff training, and operational costs.