Therapeutic Play and Children’s Healthcare

I beg to move,

That this House has considered therapeutic play and children’s healthcare.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I thank all colleagues who have joined us to support this debate, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), who I hope to hear from later. As all good stories begin, I was enjoying a beer at the Wanstead Tap during the Wanstead festival when I met one of my constituents, Sarah Owen. We spoke about our experiences of observing children suffering from cancer: I spoke about watching my teenage sister’s experience, and Sarah spoke about her experiences of her son, Hari. It is their story, and what it says about how the NHS can work better for children and their families, that I will highlight today. I am pleased to welcome Sarah and Hari, who are watching proceedings from the Public Gallery.

When we met, Sarah told me about the massive difference that play made to Hari’s care after he was diagnosed with leukaemia, aged just four. Suddenly he was plunged into a confusing whirlwind of surgery, blood transfusions, chemotherapy and, in between, separation and isolation. He was confined to a tiny room without much space and afraid to get out of his bed. A four-year-old’s life is centred around play. When their world is turned upside down after a diagnosis, play can be the only thing that removes the trauma from hospital treatment and makes it as smooth as possible. That was proven for Hari when the health play specialist arrived in that little dingy room, bringing a play mat, a tray of colourful Lego, a box of track and Thomas the Tank Engine.

My hon. Friend is describing some of the approaches that I have recently been honoured to see in action at Poole hospital. Does he agree that play professionals in our healthcare settings need proper support? Does he also agree that the Government should include health play professionals in the NHS workforce plan and make health play a registered allied health profession? I also note that the all-party parliamentary group on play, which I chair, is set to look at health and play.

I agree with my hon. Friend, who is a leader in this area through his chairship of the APPG on play. We are all grateful for that, and for the significant impact he has made for his local hospital and for play more broadly.

The Ulster hospital, which is near my constituency of Strangford in Northern Ireland, makes sure that there is no medical equipment in some of the rooms. That allows children to relax, play, read and draw, and helps to reduce the anxiety associated with hospital stays and treatment. The hospital also has a communal area for children and young people. Does the hon. Member agree that it should not be down to charitable donations to provide that; it should be down to the health trusts?

I thank the hon. Member for his powerful intervention. He is a massive champion for his local hospital. I agree that we should not rely simply on charity and that this issue should be looked at, which is the aim of the debate.

When the specialist invited Hari to play with her, Sarah told me that the change was immediate. She said:

“I saw my little Hari emerge again, play was bringing him back to us, in that dark tiny room I saw his light come back. This turning point became a moment that I held on to throughout the entirety of his childhood cancer journey.”

Sarah had to fight for that essential part of Hari’s care throughout the two and a half years of that journey. She understandably saw play as the most important therapeutic tool, but for many clinicians, medical treatments came first—even to the detriment of Hari’s mental health and wellbeing.

Play therapy services in Yeovil that support adopted children and those in kinship care are struggling due to cuts to the adoption and special guardianship support fund. Services have been reduced and therapists like Lilly have gone months without being paid. Does the hon. Member agree that that situation is unacceptable, and that more needs to be done to ensure funding models for play therapy services are sustainable, ethical and child centred?

I thank the hon. Member for his powerful intervention. I hope that we hear from the Minister how such services can be sustained, given some of the shortfalls that have been described.

In reality, medicine and play are not in competition. When clinicians took playful approaches or when health play specialists were involved, Hari was far more willing to engage with difficult treatments, helping them to go much more smoothly. The culmination of that was an MRI scan that Hari did, fully awake, at four years old, avoiding the need for general anaesthetic. The health play specialist prepared Hari for this potentially scary and challenging ordeal by playing with a Lego scan machine, and playing the sound of an MRI while talking him through that process.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for the important work that he and Starlight have done so far on this issue. Does he agree that ensuring there is effective play within children’s healthcare not only helps create happier, calmer patients but delivers real benefits for the NHS by enabling quicker, smoother procedures and reducing overall costs?

I know that my hon. Friend has been raising this subject on behalf of his local community and I agree with his sentiment.

Sadly, after Hari was discharged from hospital, that same quality of play-centred care was not always there for him. He needed 130 blood tests, and the lack of play contributed to these often being traumatic experiences where Hari had to be held down, violating the safe space of his own home.

Does the hon. Member agree that therapeutic play is most effective when embedded within healthcare teams, rather than treated in isolation, and that we need a shift away from seeing it as something that happens only in the playroom towards fully integrating it into children’s daily care?

The hon. Member is right, and he will hear more about how that impacted Sarah and Hari’s experiences. Those experiences have already had an influence on NHS policy in the way that the hon. Member would like through Sarah’s work with the charity Starlight, which co-produced the NHS Play Well toolkit that was published last year. The Government are rightly pushing forward with our new neighbourhood model, ensuring that more care takes place within the community. If we get that shift right, it will be truly beneficial to children who are in the same position that Hari was in, but doing so requires the toolkit to be implemented across the NHS—in new community services as well as our hospitals.

When I raised the issue with Whipps Cross, our local hospital, I am pleased to say that I got a very positive response. It has a dedicated play team based in the Acorn ward, alongside a garden space and a play space. The team includes a qualified play therapist, and it co-ordinates the offer for in-patient care, including for children in other wards, and helps with preparation for procedures such as blood tests, MRIs and surgery.

I thank my hon. Friend for the really interesting and informed speech he is giving—he is giving it quickly, so I will be quick with my intervention. Does he agree that just as play is essential in hospitals, it is also really important for parents? Therapeutic play can have a large impact on post-natal depression and parents’ mental health as they are taking their child through quite a difficult experience.

I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful and astute intervention. She will notice that I am speaking about not just Hari, but Sarah, because making sure that the parents are looked is a critical and fundamental part of making sure that the child is looked after.

Starlight has found that the situation in Whipps Cross is far from true around the country. In 2023/24, it found that 72% of NHS trusts had no budget for play resources and only 15% had play service policies or procedures. Only 520 registered health play specialists are employed by the NHS across the whole of England.

I thank my hon. Friend for sharing Sarah and Hari’s story, which is a powerful reminder of why play is important. My constituent Eleanor wrote to me last week following the unexpected withdrawal of funding for her level 7 play therapy apprenticeship. She is an experienced teacher who had taken it on as additional training. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must look again to ensure that there are accessible training options for play therapy, which is, as we have heard, an incredibly powerful tool for children’s emotional wellbeing?

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, who raises a powerful point about specialist training. I know she has written to the Skills Minister and lobbied the Department for Work and Pensions directly to help the Minister who is responding today and close the skills gap on behalf of her constituent.

Those are the challenges and the situation that the toolkit is there to address and that its implementation must change. This is also a real opportunity for positive change as the Government’s NHS reform programmes move forward, because better play services for children in every part of England can not only reduce trauma and its long-term consequences, but save money through quicker procedures, lead to fewer cancellations, and reduce the need for anaesthetic.

Much like my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran), my constituent Ambia has written to me to highlight the fact that funding has been withdrawn for her level 7 apprenticeship in play therapy. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) agree that if the Government want to see the savings related to therapeutic play that he talks about, they need to invest up front?

I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful intervention. I know that she is fighting for her constituent and that she is lobbying the DWP, in support of the Department of Health and Social Care, to make sure that the challenges her constituents face are addressed.