Language of play can help to heal wounds (From Swindon Advertiser)

Language of play can help to heal wounds

3:50pm Tuesday 23rd September 2008

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THEIR innocence has been cruelly stolen but children can learn to be themselves again at the NSPCC Swindon Centre.

The Victoria Road-based centre is packed with toys, puppets and magical costumes to help children escape the traumas of abuse through play, art or dressing up.

“Children don’t want to sit on a chair and talk,” said children services practitioner Ranth Patterson. “Play is their language.”

Most of the children who arrive at the centre are incredibly vulnerable after being subjected to horrific domestic or sexual abuse.

Currently the centre is helping 35 children who have been referred by social services or the police for treatment.

“If children are supported and believed by their main carer, they can recover from really awful things, but we have to start listening to them and believing them,” said children services manager Jeannette Chipping.

“Children who are hurt are often told by people who hurt them that it is their fault. So a lot of them feel shame.

“There are secrets involved and people who abuse children are often manipulative and plan things.

“We help children rebuild their lives. When we go into a room with them, we take on their pain. Some are withdrawn and always worried, while others are vocal and challenging.”

The devastating effects on parental bonds are also rebuilt, as mums and dads also get support.

Much effort has to got into relieving parents of instinctive guilt.

“The mother of a child who has suffered abuse at the hands of someone else often blames herself,” said Ranth. “She will say ‘I should have known,’ but how could she know? Children also blame themselves and we have to work hard to make them realise somebody else did it.

“Parents will often say to me ‘I want my son or daughter to forget the abuse’, and I say ‘that is not going to happen’. They will never forget but they will get over it."

Ranth’s reward is seeing children become ‘free’, as he puts it.

“Sometimes after the therapy, it is like seeing a different child,” said Ranth. “They start to lighten up.”

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