Play comes naturally to children – it’s often called the language of childhood – and it can be used to express a range of ideas and emotions that kids don’t otherwise have the vocabulary to articulate.
And that’s why play is a valuable therapeutic tool for children who have experienced trauma or other difficult experiences. Play therapy is a growing, evidence-based clinical field, and UW-Stout Polytechnic is now one of the few universities in the nation to offer a graduate-level Play Therapy Certificate program for mental health professionals.
“People in our certificate program learn how to engage with children through play and recognize that play is the way that kids are communicating about themselves or about their experiences,” said Associate Professor Andy Felton, advisor for the Play Therapy Certificate. “It’s not about playing to distract kids enough that they verbally articulate what’s going on. It is literally communicating with play.”
UW-Stout Polytechnic’s Play Therapy Certificate, offered through the counseling, rehabilitation and human services department, is designed for practicing mental health and related helping professionals, including school counselors, school psychologists, psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists. Though the certificate can be completed in as little as eight months, it is designed to be completed over a two-year period to meet Association for Play Therapy standards.
“"This is an opportunity for professionals to learn how to understand the child’s world through play while allowing children to express emotions and experiences in a safe, dynamic space,” Felton said. “It’s an opportunity for children to really articulate what they’ve experienced, how they make sense of it, how they view themselves, and how they view the world through their language of play.”
Four courses worth seven credits are required to earn the Play Therapy Certificate. An optional course allows students to accumulate the clinically supervised hours necessary for receiving certification as a Registered Play Therapist (RPT), a professional credential offered through the Association for Play Therapy.
Play allows children to express emotions
Among the first recipients of the Play Therapy Certificate from UW-Stout Polytechnic is Marlene Vail, a licensed clinical social worker from Lake Geneva with extensive experience in the field of children’s mental health, including as a treatment foster care social worker, an in-home therapist and a mental health therapist specializing in early childhood.
Vail, now a child welfare case manager for Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee County, said she already had been using play to connect with young clients. However, she wanted to gain a deeper understanding of play therapy and was pleased to discover UW-Stout Polytechnic’s new program.
“I really wanted to dive deeper into the topic and be better informed about best practices as a therapist,” she said.
While the Play Therapy Certificate courses are taught entirely online, Vail said the program was engaging and dynamic, in part because of Felton’s insightful teaching methods. “I felt that when I'd watch the videos like I was in the classroom with him,” she said.
Vail said the knowledge gained through the certificate program will help her on the path toward earning her RPT credential. In the immediate future, she expects the skills will be useful in her work as a child welfare case manager.
“Kids do not come into your office and sit down and have a conversation,” she explained, referring to her experiences as a mental health therapist. “Through play they reveal a lot of things, and eventually I’ve had kids as little as two or three years old tell me things about their feelings that their parents would be amazed about.”
Certificate program helps professionals gain supervised hours
In addition to being the only Play Therapy Certificate offered in Wisconsin, UW-Stout Polytechnic’s program has another distinction: It’s the only one in the nation to offer the clinical supervision necessary for professionals who want to earn their RPT. Felton said this option creates a pathway to the RPT credential that is significantly more affordable that other options.
Felton expects the program’s impact will grow as more working professionals receive the Play Therapy Certificate through UW-Stout Polytechnic.
“Most of them were already working with children, and now they are able to incorporate more informed, more evidence-based practices to effectively offer treatment for children,” Felton said.
The Play Therapy Certificate is one of more than 30 certificates offered at UW-Stout Polytechnic that are focused on helping accelerate professional careers. Among them are two post-master’s online programs – School Counselor Licensure for Educators Certificate and School Counselor Licensure for Mental Health Professionals Certificate – designed to provide individuals who hold graduate degrees in education- or counseling-related fields a path to licensure as school counselors in Wisconsin through the Department of Public Instruction. In addition, numerous UW-Stout Polytechnic certificate programs are aimed at post-baccalaureate educators seeking add-on certifications in fields such as Technology Education, Family and Consumer Education, Early Childhood Education, and more.
