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How Does Consultation Improve Play Therapist Growth? · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 0:04
  Cathi Spooner: A weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services.
• 0:14
  Cathi Spooner: We'll explore all things play therapy.
• 0:17
  Cathi Spooner: To elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play.
• 0:23
  Cathi Spooner: I'll discuss practical tips and ideas so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives.
• 0:33
  Cathi Spooner: So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
• 0:47
  Cathi Spooner: Hey there, play therapist.
• 0:49
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to this week's episode of Next Level Play Therapy, and today I wanna discuss a topic that we talk about all the time and that whole idea of consultation.
• 1:04
  Cathi Spooner: And so you've probably said this, I know I have said this, but I feel like we don't really do it that much actually.
• 1:15
  Cathi Spooner: And this idea of consultation and consultation is an ethical and clinical, um, is ethically and clinically important and we, we need to be doing it and yet we don't.
• 1:30
  Cathi Spooner: And I thought about my own career over the last, almost 35 years now, um, and the number of time, like, how did I do this 'cause.
• 1:42
  Cathi Spooner: I talk the talk, but am I walking the walk is the question.
• 1:47
  Cathi Spooner: And I think I did it in different ways.
• 1:52
  Cathi Spooner: I did it more formally, I would say, um, sometimes by joining a consultation group, when I owned a group practice, we kind of had that as part of the process.
• 2:04
  Cathi Spooner: We could kind of grab each other 'cause it was a.
• 2:08
  Cathi Spooner: Group practice of all play therapists, so we could kind of pull in that somehow.
• 2:16
  Cathi Spooner: And when I moved to the west coast, it was kind of the thing that I missed a lot.
• 2:22
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause when we moved to the west coast, from the east coast to the west coast, I was the only person I knew other than my husband and our two kids and our three dogs at the time.
• 2:35
  Cathi Spooner: Are they technically people?
• 2:37
  Cathi Spooner: No.
• 2:38
  Cathi Spooner: Are they emotionally people?
• 2:39
  Cathi Spooner: Yes.
• 2:40
  Cathi Spooner: Talking about my dogs.
• 2:42
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so I thought about, I, I thought about that whole idea of play therapy and community, and I missed that a lot, that I went to a play therapy training and I felt like I had found my people again.
• 2:59
  Cathi Spooner: Made some connections and i, I also realized that I missed, I kind of feel like consultation is a little bit of teaching, and I love teaching kind of a teacher at heart.
• 3:13
  Cathi Spooner: I started out my professional career as a teacher and then realized I wanted to do the counseling part, not the teaching part for education.
• 3:24
  Cathi Spooner: Anyway, I taught kids with emotional problems back in the 1980s.
• 3:30
  Cathi Spooner: That was a long time ago.
• 3:32
  Cathi Spooner: And when we moved to the West coast, I realized I really miss this whole thing about community and play therapy specifically.
• 3:42
  Cathi Spooner: 'cause I feel like play therapy is a niche within the mental health community.
• 3:50
  Cathi Spooner: And when I went to grad school, nobody was talking about play therapy.
• 3:55
  Cathi Spooner: I found about play therapy because of the school social worker and school psychologist in in the special education, um, school where I worked, and they, they were doing it back in like 1980.
• 4:11
  Cathi Spooner: What, when was that?
• 4:12
  Cathi Spooner: Like 1985, maybe 86, something like that.
• 4:18
  Cathi Spooner: And then I couldn't find it anywhere.
• 4:22
  Cathi Spooner: So I believe in the power of community, which is why I started a group consultation program called Play Therapy Academy to help people who wanted to achieve their RPT credential.
• 4:38
  Cathi Spooner: And then what I, I learned out of that is not everybody needs that level, and yet they lack that level, meaning Play Therapy Academy, and yet they lack a sense of community, a sense of where I can go to get support, and that's when I created my new membership Play therapy Elevation Circle.
• 4:59
  Cathi Spooner: I'll talk more about those at the end if you're interested.
• 5:03
  Cathi Spooner: Um, today I really wanted to talk about, honestly, some of the things I learned from doing this over the last, oh, I think it's like six years now.
• 5:16
  Cathi Spooner: Oh, goodness.
• 5:18
  Cathi Spooner: Might be seven or eight.
• 5:20
  Cathi Spooner: Um, some of the things I learned.
• 5:23
  Cathi Spooner: And then what, what does the research say about that?
• 5:27
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause I was thinking about this topic.
• 5:30
  Cathi Spooner: We talk about play therapy, consultation all the time, or consultation in general, and yet we're not really doing it that much.
• 5:37
  Cathi Spooner: And why is that?
• 5:40
  Cathi Spooner: And I, I feel like we treat it a little bit more like a luxury than a necessity because it's one more thing that we add to our list of things.
• 5:53
  Cathi Spooner: And as I've talked to people when they schedule their 30 minute meetings with me to see if Play Therapy Academy is a good fit, or now we kind of figure out is play therapy a better fit or is Elevation Circle a better fit?
• 6:07
  Cathi Spooner: What I'm finding is sometimes people have bad experiences with consultation and supervision, and so I thought about whenever I'm kind of curious about these things, I go down the research rabbit hole, and that is exactly what I did.
• 6:26
  Cathi Spooner: So I wanna highlight some of the things that research has talked about, and there were two articles there.
• 6:33
  Cathi Spooner: If you want to find out more about the articles or maybe find them yourself.
• 6:38
  Cathi Spooner: I did list the articles in the description.
• 6:41
  Cathi Spooner: So for those of you who are watching the livestream or the livestream replay, you can look in the description.
• 6:49
  Cathi Spooner: For those of you who are listening to the podcast episode, Next Level Play Therapy podcast episode then it'll also be in the description.
• 7:00
  Cathi Spooner: And the two articles that I found and I, I figured I would kind of talk about both because there was a lot of overlap and I figured, well, two is better than one when it comes to research and making your point.
• 7:15
  Cathi Spooner: So that's what I did.
• 7:16
  Cathi Spooner: So one of the research articles is by joseph, Hakeem, Cox and Greenwald, I hope I said their names right.
• 7:27
  Cathi Spooner: The, the article is is from the Journal of Health Service Psychology from 2022.
• 7:35
  Cathi Spooner: It's called Peer Consultation.
• 7:37
  Cathi Spooner: Enriching necessity rather than a luxury for psychologists during and beyond the pandemic.
• 7:44
  Cathi Spooner: That one sounded really good.
• 7:45
  Cathi Spooner: Actually had a lot of good points in there.
• 7:48
  Cathi Spooner: And then the other article is by Betas, Edmonds, Canuso Gallagher, Downey Kendall, and it's in the admin policy Mental health Journal, and the article is called Therapist Perspectives on the Effective Elements of Consultation Following Training.
• 8:14
  Cathi Spooner: And that was, so I, these actually had some really good information.
• 8:19
  Cathi Spooner: The overlap between both the articles is that.
• 8:25
  Cathi Spooner: Because they talked about, in the article, they, both articles they talked about, um, one of 'em, the one about by Betas, etal, it really talked about like learning.
• 8:38
  Cathi Spooner: Uh, they talked about evidence-based model.
• 8:41
  Cathi Spooner: So learning and evidence, evidence-based model through training and really is training enough and what does consultation look like, and if you're using consultation with the training, which I think is a really good idea, which is why I've decided in my, any of the trainings that I do, there is an option to join Elevation Circle because I feel like it's nice to have, get the training and then have a place where you can talk about it some more and talk about how you've implemented it and when you run into some rough patches, 'cause you will, we all run into the rough patches, then you have a place to go with that in a community where you can get support.
• 9:26
  Cathi Spooner: And so in this Betas article, they talked about learning evidence-based model.
• 9:33
  Cathi Spooner: And then in their research that they found about this topic, what they found was just, just reading about it or just learning it didn't actually, uh, facilitate effectiveness.
• 9:49
  Cathi Spooner: And so that's when they were looking at, okay, if we're using consultation to improve using the the model to fidelity.
• 9:59
  Cathi Spooner: And I would include in there using it effectively.
• 10:03
  Cathi Spooner: And what do you do when you get lost and overwhelmed and not sure what to do.
• 10:06
  Cathi Spooner: Then consultation was the recommendation.
• 10:11
  Cathi Spooner: And so when they were looking at the recommendation, or I used the word recommendation, they didn't use it in there.
• 10:19
  Cathi Spooner: And the idea of consultation, what would effective consultation look like?
• 10:27
  Cathi Spooner: So this idea of what does effective consultation look like?
• 10:33
  Cathi Spooner: What would be effective.
• 10:35
  Cathi Spooner: And then the second article where they were talking about consultation as a necessity and not a luxury, but also through their research and kind of anecdotally, they had had experiences where it wasn't very effective or maybe it felt more punitive sometimes for people and I know as I've talked to people who have sped scheduled 30 minute video calls with me, I know they've kind of talked about some negative experiences they've had sometimes.
• 11:15
  Cathi Spooner: So what I thought would be helpful is first talk about what makes, what are, what are, what does a research show.
• 11:24
  Cathi Spooner: At least in these two articles, what does it show about?
• 11:27
  Cathi Spooner: What makes consultation effective?
• 11:31
  Cathi Spooner: And so for those of you providing supervision and consultation, these would be things that would be effective.
• 11:39
  Cathi Spooner: As well.
• 11:40
  Cathi Spooner: And then I wanna talk about how do we take this from the wider mental health community of the research into play therapy, specific consultation, and how to get the most benefit supporting.
• 11:56
  Cathi Spooner: Each other in the play therapy field, what does that look like?
• 11:59
  Cathi Spooner: What does consultation look like?
• 12:02
  Cathi Spooner: Even I use this feedback to kind of help make sure from my membership programs, play Therapy Academy and now Play Therapy Elevation Circle, that we're kind of hitting the mark and I was happy to learn that we are hitting the mark.
• 12:16
  Cathi Spooner: So that was good.
• 12:17
  Cathi Spooner: Which kind of went along with what people in those programs say, which is yes, they are very helpful.
• 12:25
  Cathi Spooner: And I would say if you ask anybody in Play Therapy Academy, which is my higher tier, more hands-on, more structured program to learn play therapy and if anybody's interested in pursuing their RPT credential, it would be Play Therapy Academy, not Elevation Circle.
• 12:47
  Cathi Spooner: Um, one of the things they would say, even if I wasn't around, they would say it's the community.
• 12:54
  Cathi Spooner: And we, oh my goodness we had that experience in our consultation meeting last Saturday for the Saturday group.
• 13:04
  Cathi Spooner: Even with all of my experience, one of the members presented a case and we were all like, oh my goodness.
• 13:10
  Cathi Spooner: That one just is overwhelming.
• 13:12
  Cathi Spooner: And this would be one of those cases you would be, you would be tempted to just write 'em off and try to get rid of 'em.
• 13:18
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, if we're being really honest here, that's what we would probably try to do.
• 13:24
  Cathi Spooner: And what I found to be so amazing, and this to me is community when you have a group community versus kind of individual consultation, which is the power of all of our, I call it all of our brains together, where this person presented their case.
• 13:49
  Cathi Spooner: I give my feed feedback.
• 13:53
  Cathi Spooner: And then other people give their feedback and when they give their feedback, that gets me to thinking, gives me some more ideas, which then gives other people more ideas.
• 14:04
  Cathi Spooner: And then that gives the person presenting ideas.
• 14:07
  Cathi Spooner: And by the end of it, we actually, I felt like we had something that might actually work to help out.
• 14:15
  Cathi Spooner: We'll find out.
• 14:17
  Cathi Spooner: And to me that's, that's what consultation can do.
• 14:21
  Cathi Spooner: And that's what community can do.
• 14:24
  Cathi Spooner: So for consultation to be effective, the research in these two articles identified four things.
• 14:33
  Cathi Spooner: The four things being, it has to be ongoing for it to really, really benefit, not just one off, although, you know, sometimes all we need just to help us get unstuck.
• 14:45
  Cathi Spooner: If you wanna talk to a consultant.
• 14:49
  Cathi Spooner: Help get unstuck with that.
• 14:50
  Cathi Spooner: Probably two times is better than one time and ongoing is what really helps to take your skills to the next level when you have ongoing support.
• 15:07
  Cathi Spooner: Because then it can help you get, this is my opinion and this is what I've seen.
• 15:11
  Cathi Spooner: It can get help you get through each stage of the therapy process for play therapy, how do you, how do you facilitate that healing using your specific model through each stage of the play therapy process?
• 15:28
  Cathi Spooner: And to me, that's where, when it's ongoing, and for different clients, it might look one, one way for one client and another way for another client.
• 15:39
  Cathi Spooner: So that ongoing element is one of the things that they found to be most effective.
• 15:46
  Cathi Spooner: The other is that it's relational, uh, because really, really, if we're gonna open up and show our vulnerabilities as play therapists, then we need to feel safe, right?
• 16:00
  Cathi Spooner: We're human, we say that about our clients, and we need it to be that way for us as well.
• 16:06
  Cathi Spooner: We need to feel like it's not gonna be punitive or if I say something I'm gonna be judged or if it's, if it's connected to my work and it's evaluative.
• 16:18
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, there isn't, when you're in that licensing process here in the US there is' evaluative aspect to it.
• 16:27
  Cathi Spooner: In work there, there is that as well.
• 16:29
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, that's the role we have as supervisors as, as opposed to consultants.
• 16:37
  Cathi Spooner: So even in those cases though, we need to make it relational.
• 16:43
  Cathi Spooner: If we want, if we want people that we're consulting with to open up and help really get down to the nitty gritty about what's going on to help move the needle forward, then they need to feel safe.
• 16:59
  Cathi Spooner: The other is, um oh.
• 17:03
  Cathi Spooner: Um, relational, not evaluative, which kind of goes against what I just said, relational.
• 17:08
  Cathi Spooner: I, I mean, there's an aspect of it that is evaluative, so I might kind of, I don't know how I feel about that.
• 17:19
  Cathi Spooner: I, um, I think it's both.
• 17:24
  Cathi Spooner: I probably will think about that a lot more after we end this broadcast today.
• 17:29
  Cathi Spooner: And those of you listening to the uh, podcast.
• 17:33
  Cathi Spooner: I, I do think when it's relational, but it's a professional relationship.
• 17:37
  Cathi Spooner: There are boundaries around it, but I think it's that idea of that we show up as human beings, and I think that creates safety when we can do that.
• 17:48
  Cathi Spooner: And so that's the third thing that needs to be safe and not performative.
• 17:54
  Cathi Spooner: We're not gonna get anywhere if it's just superficial, in my opinion.
• 17:57
  Cathi Spooner: And when I, when I facilitate in, uh, Play Therapy Academy and Elevation Circle, we do real.
• 18:05
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and I, we, it, it, we make it a safe place.
• 18:10
  Cathi Spooner: That being said, there are certain things that, you know, kind of, we do have boundaries around those.
• 18:18
  Cathi Spooner: That's important.
• 18:20
  Cathi Spooner: And it needs to be safe though.
• 18:23
  Cathi Spooner: Those other things that I'm kind of hinting at, those are more, um, those don't happen very often.
• 18:32
  Cathi Spooner: I think they're more rare, and most of the time creating that sense of safety is really important.
• 18:38
  Cathi Spooner: And then the, the fourth thing that was identified is using real cases, not just.
• 18:49
  Cathi Spooner: Case, you know, like hypotheticals or even when we, I, I notice this too, even in Play Therapy Academy, when people are presenting their case and we're staffing a specific case, I always give the option of maybe you don't have a case, but maybe you have some a question more general in nature that covers quite a few clients.
• 19:14
  Cathi Spooner: Even when we do more of the hypotheticals, then we always get down into a client and it, um, and so that's what it was saying with the consultation to be effective.
• 19:27
  Cathi Spooner: That it, the real cases really, how do you apply this information in real cases to help move that needle forward for healing and getting the best results that you can for your clients.
• 19:44
  Cathi Spooner: And so with that, how does this help play therapists.
• 19:52
  Cathi Spooner: How does consultation help play therapists?
• 19:54
  Cathi Spooner: I feel like play therapy adds a another layer of complexity that these studies don't necessarily talk about that, but they kind of quietly validate, and that is that ability to to create a safe space for, for it to be relational with people who understand play therapy.
• 20:23
  Cathi Spooner: That's the key.
• 20:24
  Cathi Spooner: How, because how, how many of you probably listening have, have met with, uh, a supervisor and they weren't a child and adolescent therapist and they didn't know much about play therapy, and I'm not saying they can't be good.
• 20:41
  Cathi Spooner: I had some awesome supervisors and they didn't know about play therapy, which is why I felt lost half the time, way early in my career.
• 20:52
  Cathi Spooner: But they didn't know about play therapy.
• 20:54
  Cathi Spooner: And so usually you would try to staff your case and they would they might be able to help out with parents, but as far as what you were doing in the play therapy session with your client, they didn't really have any knowledge or expertise in that area.
• 21:11
  Cathi Spooner: And so I can't tell you how many times I heard, oh, you're doing a good job.
• 21:16
  Cathi Spooner: They're playing.
• 21:16
  Cathi Spooner: It'll be fine.
• 21:17
  Cathi Spooner: You know, you can always use worksheets.
• 21:19
  Cathi Spooner: I hate worksheets.
• 21:22
  Cathi Spooner: So I feel like in consultation for play therapy, you really need to connect with play therapists and um.
• 21:39
  Cathi Spooner: That, that to me is what will make it more beneficial.
• 21:43
  Cathi Spooner: And then if you're using that consultation to help you figure out what to do in your sessions moment by moment by moment, then having somebody or having a community specifically geared towards play therapists is really what's gonna be beneficial.
• 22:04
  Cathi Spooner: Because play therapy isn't linear.
• 22:06
  Cathi Spooner: Kids don't follow agendas, and so consultation in play therapy is gonna help you decide when to follow the play, when maybe to gently structure what's going on in the playroom or how are you co-regulating in the playroom.
• 22:27
  Cathi Spooner: What is figuring out, how do I apply what the treatment goals are?
• 22:32
  Cathi Spooner: What is that gonna look like in the play therapy session?
• 22:36
  Cathi Spooner: And so that is gonna help you use play therapy more intentionally.
• 22:43
  Cathi Spooner: Apply your play therapy model with more intention and probably a little more to fidelity when you get stuck so that you don't do the activity hopping from just kind of pulling out, trying to figure out any activity that's gonna help and move the needle.
• 23:04
  Cathi Spooner: So you're, you know, like I, I call it, throwing the, the throwing the spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks method, which never really works.
• 23:14
  Cathi Spooner: You end up feeling lost and overwhelmed and confused, and then your imposter syndrome kicks in.
• 23:20
  Cathi Spooner: And if things don't go well, you start second guessing whether or not you're cut out to be a play therapist.
• 23:28
  Cathi Spooner: And this is where consultation can help with that.
• 23:31
  Cathi Spooner: Get back on track and so that you're not symptom chasing, you're not looking strictly at the symptom.
• 23:40
  Cathi Spooner: Consultation can help you get at the roots of what's going on because that's gonna move the needle more.
• 23:48
  Cathi Spooner: And s be more intentional about what's going on, what stage of play therapy you're in.
• 23:56
  Cathi Spooner: What will you do in this stage of play therapy using this play therapy model so that what you're doing is gonna be more effective, or it's gonna land better.
• 24:08
  Cathi Spooner: So to speak and consultation can also help you stay regulated yourself, get the support that you need.
• 24:17
  Cathi Spooner: This is hard work that we do.
• 24:20
  Cathi Spooner: We meet with clients day after day, hour after hour, after hour, and some of them are harder than others, and so getting the support that you need in order to stay regulated and supported yourself is gonna help you avoid burnout, feeling overwhelmed and confused, like you got no creativity left, and like you got no energy, and you start dreading.
• 24:45
  Cathi Spooner: And maybe you start kind of second guessing yourself that maybe you're not cut out to this, right?
• 24:51
  Cathi Spooner: So the bottom line is that, consultation can help play therapists stop second guessing and start practicing with intention.
• 25:02
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today.
• 25:06
  Cathi Spooner: Um, I just wanna do a little recap and then I'll talk a little bit more about Elevation Circle Play Therapy Elevation Circle, which is my online play therapy membership.
• 25:20
  Cathi Spooner: And that I, that's gonna be opening up soon.
• 25:23
  Cathi Spooner: I also have a free webinar coming up, so if you're interested in that to help you figure out.
• 25:30
  Cathi Spooner: So we only covered one part of what I feel like is an important framework.
• 25:35
  Cathi Spooner: If you wanna stop second guessing yourself, every clinical decision that you're making, and feel like you're being more effective.
• 25:44
  Cathi Spooner: In the free webinar, I'm gonna talk about three parts, this idea of community being one of 'em.
• 25:50
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested in the free webinar, I'll talk to you a little bit more about that as well.
• 25:55
  Cathi Spooner: And I have openings in Play Therapy Academy right now.
• 26:00
  Cathi Spooner: And also Elevation Circle is gonna be opening up at the end of the month.
• 26:05
  Cathi Spooner: I have, uh, enrollment will be opening up.
• 26:08
  Cathi Spooner: So really what, for today's topic about consultation and what, what makes it important and why, why is it important?
• 26:20
  Cathi Spooner: Is that really play therapy, being in a community, isn't really about doing more, it's really about taking what you know, taking what you've learned in those trainings and how do you apply that information.
• 26:38
  Cathi Spooner: Like I, I talked to one person a while back and one of the things that they were struggling with is I've gone to all these trainings.
• 26:47
  Cathi Spooner: But I don't know how to bring 'em all together.
• 26:50
  Cathi Spooner: And to me that's where consultation and having a community can help you figure out what is your theoretical framework and how do you take all these things you're learning and put 'em into a cohesive way where you feel like you're being more intentional.
• 27:09
  Cathi Spooner: So it's not about working harder, it's not about one more thing I have to do, it's about using that time to get there faster and feel supported.
• 27:23
  Cathi Spooner: Like you're not alone on an island by yourself doing play therapy with nobody else around, and you don't always need another play therapy training.
• 27:32
  Cathi Spooner: Sometimes you just need a place where you can take what you've learned and figure it out, how do I apply this, that what's the missing piece that I haven't figured out?
• 27:44
  Cathi Spooner: And you can use community to help you do that.
• 27:48
  Cathi Spooner: And then what these studies confirm is that play therapy, and those of us who've, we've been doing it for a while, we kind of intuitively know this, and the, the research kind of, not kind of the research validated, at least these two articles validated what we kind of already know deep down, if you've been doing this for a while or maybe you're a supervisor or a play therapy consultant or supervisor, is that really the our competence grows in connection.
• 28:31
  Cathi Spooner: Connection with other play therapists who get it, other like-minded play therapists who understand the therapeutic powers of play and when you, they understand play so you don't have to explain it over and over and over and over again.
• 28:47
  Cathi Spooner: Only to have somebody say, oh, you know, use a worksheet.
• 28:51
  Cathi Spooner: That'll be fine.
• 28:52
  Cathi Spooner: I don't like worksheets.
• 28:54
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, I have some, but I. I use them as a kind of stepping stone for more experiential things if I'm being directive, depending on what I'm working on.
• 29:08
  Cathi Spooner: And then confidence really grows when you have a space where you feel safe and connected to be real, to reflect on what you've been doing, what's going on.
• 29:24
  Cathi Spooner: Having that, that dedicated time and space where you can take a step back, do a little reflection, and then come back and figure out how to put all the pieces together and that really sustainability, doing this for the long haul is really about being in a community to get the support that you need.
• 29:51
  Cathi Spooner: So when you're feeling a little burned out and overwhelmed and second guessing yourself and you're thinking maybe you weren't cut out to be a play therapist, you have a community that kind of help you look at things differently, help you get unstuck, help you figure out where you might be missing the mark in a, in a safe way.
• 30:11
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause we all miss the mark sometimes.
• 30:13
  Cathi Spooner: Constructive feedback.
• 30:15
  Cathi Spooner: When you're comfortable with the people can be really useful.
• 30:19
  Cathi Spooner: And that that's, that's how we move the needle.
• 30:22
  Cathi Spooner: That's how we move forward.
• 30:25
  Cathi Spooner: And so when we look at it that way, consultation isn't a luxury.
• 30:34
  Cathi Spooner: It's really a necessity.
• 30:36
  Cathi Spooner: It's something that can really help us to, be better therapists to provide better play therapy services to stay in there for the long haul and to not feel like we're doing it alone.
• 30:54
  Cathi Spooner: So if, if you are interested in being part of a play therapy community, I do have some openings now, if you're, especially if you're interested in your RPT credential.
• 31:08
  Cathi Spooner: Play Therapy Academy would be the program that you're interested in.
• 31:13
  Cathi Spooner: And, um, I have openings now, so I'm meeting with people and seeing if it's a good fit for them.
• 31:22
  Cathi Spooner: Schedule a 30 minute video call with me.
• 31:25
  Cathi Spooner: Hop over to my website at RH play therapy training.com.
• 31:32
  Cathi Spooner: That's RH play therapy training.com.
• 31:35
  Cathi Spooner: Renewing hearts, play Therapy Training, and hop over to the consultation page.
• 31:41
  Cathi Spooner: You'll see Play Therapy Academy.
• 31:44
  Cathi Spooner: You'll see Elevation Circle and Play Therapy Academy you'll, when you, you can find out more about it there, schedule a 30 minute video call with me and we'll see if it's a good fit for you.
• 31:54
  Cathi Spooner: Maybe Elevation Circle is a better fit for you.
• 31:57
  Cathi Spooner: And Elevation Circle, you, you can get on the wait list for that just to find out when it's open.
• 32:04
  Cathi Spooner: It doesn't obligate you to anything.
• 32:06
  Cathi Spooner: You just get notified so you don't miss it.
• 32:10
  Cathi Spooner: Enrollment for, that's gonna be opening up at the end of the month and so if you don't wanna miss that, then definitely get on the wait list.
• 32:19
  Cathi Spooner: And I do have, I have, um, because I feel like community is just one part of of the framework that kind of moves the needle.
• 32:32
  Cathi Spooner: And for those of you interested, we're putting the links in the comments.
• 32:37
  Cathi Spooner: And um, if you're interested, I have a free webinar coming up.
• 32:45
  Cathi Spooner: The free webinar is called, how to provide play therapy without second guessing.
• 32:51
  Cathi Spooner: Every, every clinical decision, even complex cases, I talk about a three part framework that can help you guide that, get, move that needle for you, and it, it's applicable no matter what your play therapy model is.
• 33:09
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested, then registration for that is open.
• 33:15
  Cathi Spooner: It's gonna be happening on sunday, uh, January 25th in the afternoon for me here in the, uh, west on the West Coast.
• 33:26
  Cathi Spooner: Sign up, register for the free training, and if you have questions, feel free to message me and check the links in the comments.
• 33:38
  Cathi Spooner: And I will see you next week.
• 33:42
  Cathi Spooner: Bye for now.
• 33:49
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 33:54
  Cathi Spooner: I hope you found the discussion valuable and gain new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal.
• 34:03
  Cathi Spooner: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 34:09
  Cathi Spooner: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 34:15
  Cathi Spooner: Remember.
• 34:16
  Cathi Spooner: Play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 34:19
  Cathi Spooner: Whether you're a new play therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play in your own work and relationships.
• 34:30
  Cathi Spooner: If you have any questions or topics, suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you.
• 34:38
  Cathi Spooner: Connect with me on social media and visit my website at Renewing Heart's Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources.
• 34:50
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 34:54
  Cathi Spooner: Until next time, keep playing, learning and growing.