Supporting children and families to meet their true potential through play and connection.

Offering a holistic, neuro-affirming, heart-centred and trauma-informed approach to supporting you and your child to thrive.

Appointments currently available in Albany, WA

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WHAT IS PLAY THERAPY?

Child-Centred Play Therapy is a non-directive type of psychotherapy that helps children communicate their inner experiences through the use of toys, therapeutic relationship and a safe environment. Children are free to play in almost any way they choose including with toys, creative and sensory materials like sand, paint and playdough or role play.

Play is a child’s most natural way of communication. In Play Therapy, the therapist works alongside the child to support them to connect to themselves and develop deeper understandings of their own inner world. Through play, children are also able to make sense of challenging and traumatic experiences, find resolution and create lasting healing.

 

PLAY THERAPY HELPS CHILDREN:

  • Develop confidence and self-esteem

  • Find healthy ways of communicating

  • Improve resilience and coping skills.

  • Build and maintain healthy relationships as they learn new social skills and

  • Make sense of traumatic or challenging experiences and re-wire pathways in the brain to create long-term healing

  • Develop self-responsibility

  • See themselves and others in a more positive light

  • Understand and express their emotions in healthy ways

  • Expand their ability to cope with stress and learn skills for co-regulation

  • Reduce challenging behaviours as they come back to a felt sense of safety and learn new ways to express themselves.

  • Individual Play Therapy

    1:1 45 minute sessions with your child.

    This includes a holistic parent intake assessment and regular parent appointments to discuss progress, problem solve through challenges and supports and celebrate successes.

    Suitable for children 3 to teens. Everybody is welcome.

    Self and plan-managed NDIS funding accepted, private health rebates available.

  • Parent & Child Play Therapy

    Play Therapy sessions with you and your child. This involves more intensive parent work as we dive deeper into strengthening the parent-child relationship and use this to create magic in and out of the playroom. You become equipped with the confidence, skills, knowledge and support to be able to support your child through all the ups and downs.

  • Training & Workshops

    As an OT and Play Therapist with 15 years experiences in both developmental paediatrics and mental health, I offer workshops and trainings in a range of topics - get in touch to enquire.

  • Mentoring & Supervision

    Online or face to face mentoring for clinicians available.

    Currently completing clinical supervision training, with the view to offering RPT-S supervision in 2025.

Kylie Owen - Founder

Occupational Therapist

Child-Centred Play Therapist

Bachelor of Science (Occupational Therapy) Curtin University 2009

Graduate Diploma Mental Health Sciences (Parent & Infant Mental Health) Melbourne University 2014

Advanced Clinical Training – Child Centred Play Therapy – Play Therapy Australia 2019

 

 

I have been immersed in the work of supporting children and families with a range of complex needs to learn, grow and heal through play for the past 15 years. My career began in the public health system working with children with developmental delays and their families for 9 years. It was here where I first began to see and respect play as a window into the child’s world and the most natural vehicle for supporting growth and connection. My special interest in the inner worlds of children and parents led me to do further training in parent and infant mental health, and years later led me to complete my Play Therapy training. Finding Play Therapy for me felt like coming home to something deep within myself, and a big exhale all at once.  I eagerly began working as a Play Therapist in 2019 in private practice, and then opened my own practice, Hearts & Hands in 2021 after becoming a mother myself.

Now, as a mum of two daughters, and in my 4th year of running my own Play Therapy practice I find myself more and more passionate each day about the ways we can truly see our children in their gifts and their challenges, support them to feel safe, loved, accepted and connected, whilst also supporting and parenting ourselves through the wild ride that is raising children.

My work and my parenting are informed by and aligned with the very exciting research in neuroscience, attachment and trauma with a healthy dose of self-compassion. I am very interested in the connection between mind, heart and body and am also part way through a certificate in Integrative Somatic Therapy.

When I’m not in the play room, you will find me in my hideaway home in the forest with my family, enjoying the gifts of nature, yoga, a good book, baking up a sweet treat, or half-doing my many creative projects.

 
 
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Contact us.

heartsandhandsot@outlook.com
0424952572

P.O. Box 971, Denmark WA 6333