Therapeutic Play in Foster Care: What You Can Do at Home

You do not need a qualification to play with a child. That is worth saying first, because the word therapeutic puts people off before they start. Most of what helps a child who has been let down happens on a kitchen floor with a bag of dry rice, not in a clinic. Here is the difference between therapeutic play and play therapy, what the first one looks like in your house, and how to tell when a child needs the second.

Please note: this is general information about play and emotional wellbeing, not personal or medical advice, and it is correct at 6 November 2026. Decisions about a child’s health care are made with the child’s social worker, and with a GP or CAMHS where that is needed. The NICE guideline for children in care, NG205 (published 20 October 2021), sets out what support should be in place.

Therapeutic play and play therapy are two different things

These two phrases get used as though they mean the same thing. They do not. Play therapy is a treatment: it happens in a room set aside for it, with a trained practitioner, at the same time each week, and the child goes in on their own. Therapeutic play is what you do all week, in your own home, with no appointment and no certificate.

Both are worth having, and only one of them is your job. GLF’s own guidance for carers is blunt about it. You do not need to be certified to encourage play in your day to day care of a child. The playfulness in PACE, the approach our carers are trained in, is exactly this: a way of being around a child rather than a technique you apply at four o’clock on a Thursday.

So if you have been reading about trauma and attachment and quietly deciding you are not qualified to help, the answer is that you already have the thing that does the work. You are the person who is there at bedtime.

Why play reaches a child when talking does not

A child who has learned that adults are unreliable will not sit down and explain it to you. Talking is too direct, and it asks them to find words for things they may never have had words for. Play goes round the side.

The Department for Education’s figures for the year to 31 March 2025, published on 26 November 2025, show how much there is to go round. Of the children in care aged five to sixteen who were scored on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, 42 per cent came out in the band counted as a cause for concern, up from 41 per cent the year before. A score was returned for only 78 per cent of the children who should have had one, so the real picture is more likely worse than better.

That is a lot of children carrying something they cannot say out loud. A child who will not answer “how was school” will sometimes tell a puppet. Children also replay what they have seen, so a doll’s house can show you things a child could never put to you directly, which is why our training asks carers to watch the play as well as join in with it. If that sounds daunting, our guide to communicating with a child in care covers the sideways conversations in more detail.

The small rules that make play feel safe

Most of therapeutic play is permission rather than method, and the rules are mostly about restraint on your part.

• Follow the child’s lead. If you are invited in, play along. If they turn away, let it go.
• Do not teach or correct during play, unless somebody is about to get hurt. The urge to mention that giraffes are not purple is strong and worth resisting.
• Laugh with a child, never at them. Avoid tickling: it looks like fun from the outside and feels like losing control from the inside, which is the last thing a child who has had no control needs.
• Put your phone in a drawer. A watch that buzzes counts too.

One more, and carers tell us it is the one that surprises them. Do not start a game when a child is already upset. Play is meant to be fun, and offering it as a distraction from distress teaches a child that you would rather they cheered up than told you what was wrong.

What this looks like on a wet Tuesday

None of it needs money. A bag of dry rice from the corner shop, poured between two plastic tubs, will hold a four-year-old for half an hour and does more for a jumpy nervous system than any app on your phone.

• Senses. Sand, mud, rice or dried beans for pouring. Music made with pans and a wooden spoon. Tasting things with eyes shut. Looking for shapes in the clouds on the walk home from school. Watch the child’s sensory threshold and dial it down the moment they flinch.
• Dressing up. A box of odd clothes gets a child into a story, and the story shows you where their mind goes when nobody is steering it.
• Arts and crafts. Useful for any child who cannot or will not use words, including a child still learning English.
• Puppets. It is easier to say a hard thing when somebody else is saying it.

Two cautions. Think about what a child has lived through before you start a game of chase, because being pursued is not funny to everybody. And make sure a child from a minority background has dolls and toys that look like them. That takes one order and one conversation, and it is noticed far more than you would expect.

When a child needs more than you can give at home

Sometimes the answer is a professional, and this is where it pays to know how the ground lies. Play therapy is not regulated by law. The Professional Standards Authority puts it plainly: “Play therapists are not regulated by law, but there are registers for play therapists which are accredited by the PSA.” Anyone at all can print the words play therapist on a card. Compare that with the arts therapists, who are regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council: art therapist, music therapist and dramatherapist are protected titles there, so only a registered practitioner can use one.

That is not a reason to steer clear of play therapy. It is a reason to check the register. The British Association of Play Therapists keeps a register of qualified play therapists accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, and Play Therapy UK keeps one as well. Look the name up before you book the first session.

For a child living with you, you will not usually be arranging any of this yourself. Support of this kind is commissioned through the child’s social worker, and NICE expects something to be in place while a child waits: recommendation 1.5.17 of NG205 asks for intermediate support for the people around a child who is on the waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services, and says it “should not be used as a replacement for CAMHS”. In practice that means ask early, then ask again. Our article on supporting a child’s mental health goes through the referral route. Day to day decisions about health, education and leisure can be delegated to you and get written into the child’s plan when they move in, so use that meeting to settle what you can agree yourself and what needs a phone call first.

You won’t have to do this alone

Nobody expects you to work this out from a web page. Every GLF carer has a supervising social worker who knows the child, and our training covers therapeutic parenting properly rather than as a slogan. If a child’s play is telling you something that worries you, that is a phone call on Monday morning, not a thing to sit on until the next supervision.

The practical side, since people are too polite to ask. GLF pays one fixed weekly fee that covers the allowance and the reward together: 479.50 pounds a week for a child under 11, and 507.50 pounds a week for a child aged 11 or over, per child, for as long as they are living with you. Homes taking higher-needs children attract an enhanced fee of roughly 100 to 200 pounds a week on top. There are no separate one-off payments for birthdays, because it is all inside the weekly figure. Ofsted inspected us from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated us Outstanding in all three of its judgements.

Play is the cheapest thing in fostering and the part carers remember years later. A child who has worked out that being near you is fun has learned something about adults that no Thursday afternoon session can teach them.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a qualification to use therapeutic play at home?

No. Play therapy needs a trained practitioner, but encouraging play in your day to day care of a child does not, and GLF’s own guidance for carers says so. If you want to go further, Theraplay UK trains practitioners who then coach parents and carers through playful activities built around connection, and your supervising social worker can tell you what we run.

The child I’m fostering doesn’t seem to know how to play. Is something wrong?

It is more common than people expect, and it usually means nobody ever showed them. A child who spent their early years looking after a parent, or being told to be quiet, may have no idea what to do with a box of Lego. Start smaller, sit alongside them rather than opposite them, and do not read the blankness as refusal.

How do I find a play therapist, and who pays for it?

For a child living with you, the child’s social worker normally arranges and funds it, so start there rather than booking privately. If you are looking for your own child, check the British Association of Play Therapists register or Play Therapy UK first, because the title is not protected by law and the register is the only real check there is.