Group Theraplay: Sunshine Circles

Niall, an Assistant Educational Psychologist at Swinderby School, attended a two day ‘Group Theraplay’ course. He then began a new intervention at school, ‘Sunshine Circles’ based on these principles. The main aim of these sessions is to encourage feelings of safety through play. The sessions can help enhance self-esteem, trust in others and joyful engagement with peers and adults.

The intervention is evidence-based and proven to be useful for a wide variety of children. The theoretical foundations that underpin ‘Group Theraplay’ include: attachment theory, polyvagal theory, co-regulation, relational approaches and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

During sessions, we hope to provide nurturing moments to promote feelings of safety. We use co-regulation skills to stretch children’s window of tolerance and help them learn self-regulation and social skills through play.

A predictable routine is followed each session, beginning with singing along to ‘You are my Sunshine’. The session includes two nurturing moments at the start and end, as well as engaging games to encourage peer and adult co-operation throughout. The initial nurturing moment is described as ‘check-ups’, a moment to give each child undivided attention. The idea is to ‘notice’ something about the child and provide nurturing reassuring touch (via hand massages or hand rollers).

The structure of a Theraplay session should meet the child at their current arousal state, then introduce activities which either up or down-regulate. Theraplay is like a rollercoaster with peaks and troughs throughout, with active high arousal games followed by more calming/relaxing activities.

During the initial roll out of ‘Sunshine Circles’ with Owls class, we observed amazing interactions throughout. The class teacher, Karen, started to see progress outside of sessions:

“This is the first time the group have engaged all together in such a small shared space like this, especially AE. Before the Sunshine Circles sessions started, I would never have thought it would be possible that he would engage in a group session like this. He has made amazing progress with communication and interaction since the sessions started, and he can now, when settled, communicate effectively when he needs a break from the task or the group, and is much more accepting of moving around the room and joining the group and shared spaces.”