The art and play therapy program at The Infants’ Home assists children struggling emotionally, often through developmental or chronic health problems, family stress or disruptive changes.
Social and emotional challenges can overwhelm children, who cannot draw on their own resources. The repair of such a breakdown is crucial to the child developing a robust ability to cope and deal with adverse circumstances.
Art and play therapy aims to provide children with the self esteem to deal with these circumstances.
Children who are enrolled in our 4 early education and care centres or in the family day care we administer can be referred to this specialised service.
Children receive an individual art and play therapy session each week. The art therapist provides a supported therapeutic intervention during this session, as well as support in the playground.
The art and play therapy program helps older preschool children aged 3-5 years, with priority given to those due to leave for school the following year.
Each year The Infants’ Home aims to provide a direct one-to-one service for between 10 and 15 children who have been identified as high-needs children.
Sand play, symbol work and artistic media allow expression of the child’s inner world, often revealing unconscious processes and dilemmas.
By encouraging and supporting creativity, the therapist helps the child work transformatively and safely with many feelings, including anger, grief, fear and with family issues.
The child-centered approach validates the child’s experience, and helps build up and heal an often damaged self esteem.
The art and play therapist at The Infants’ Home works closely with each child’s family and with early childhood educators so that any relief experienced by the child from the therapy can be magnified and progressed into the family unit, as well as into the early childhood education environment.
In recent years, The Infants’ Home has been able to offer art and play therapy with support from a philanthropic foundation that wants to remain anonymous.
Without such phenomenal support from this foundation we would not have been able to help so many children.
With a Masters in Art Therapy from La Trobe University in Victoria, Rachel Ravid-Horesh is a qualified art therapist and an experienced practitioner in early intervention with children from different backgrounds.
Her experience as an art therapist and case worker includes community organisations, health care facilities and schools. She has particular experience working with people who have been marginalised.
Over the past 10 years Rachel has worked in Australia and overseas with people of all ages who want to explore their creative potential and express their emotions.
© 2012 The Infants' Home (Established 1874,
incorporated by Act of NSW Parliament in 1924)
Patron: Sir Nicholas Shehadie AC OBE,
ABN: 71 174 918 661
