Certificate in Creative Care

Course details

Children meet the world in different ways than adults and this course addresses several ways to enable us to facilitate children’s holistic development, and assist them in overcoming difficulties, utilising play, in a variety of care settings. This six day course provides participants with the basic skills and understanding of play and its application to aid children’s emotional and holistic development. Play is vitally important to enable children develop healthy attachments. More than ever children (and parents) need to learn how to play again, it is essential for healthy child development. The early relationship between a child and a significant adult is based on playfulness, and research has show that play is necessary for a child to thrive. Indeed we now know that the brain depends on play to develop to maturity.

The course is designed to equip participants with a range of useful skills to facilitate working in a creative way with children and vulnerable clients including those in institutional settings both at home and abroad. It includes content in relation to how play supports the development of personal identity and supports the building of healthy attachment (and the healing of disrupted attachments), creative interventions usefully for children and clients with particular needs (sensory, physical, intellectual), and play with children who are non-verbal, or whose first language is not the same as the play practitioner. We address issues in relation to providing a play enriched and developmentally appropriate environments. There is a high emphasis on experiential learning and the use of creative interventions including sensory and messy play, the use of sand and water, heuristic play, art activities, stories, pretend play, social play and play and the natural environment.