Foundations of Play Therapy with Ann Beckley-Forest
March 12, March 13, 2026
LIVE WEBINAR
This training will increase your confidence in working with children. Design your space and choose materials to engage children therapeutically and create emotional safety.
Play Therapy is a way to approach children by entering their world and allowing them to express their worries and master struggles. We will build upon the fundamentals of Child Centered Play Therapy, an evidence-based treatment for children.
We will explore the continuum of non-directive to directive play therapy experiences and how to know what is happening in the session. We will also consider how to increase your success with the interventions you already use, such as CBT, by making them engaging and fun. We will talk about the difficulties of using these techniques with virtual therapy and how to address this challenge.
Presenter Bio:
Ann Beckley-Forest is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Buffalo, New York, and has focused on interventions with children and adolescents throughout her career. She likes to say she became a registered play therapist because she never really grew up and loves having toys in her office! She is a registered play therapy supervisor and approved provider of play therapy education, and her specialties include intervention with very young children, as well as problems of attachment and work with adolescent and adult survivors of trauma. She is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and a faculty member of the Child Trauma Institute. She trains locally and internationally and writes about the integration of EMDR and play therapy, and co-edited the recently released book EMDR with Children in the Play Therapy Room.
Timeline:
March 12-13, 2026
9:00 am – 4:30 pm EST daily
Learning Objectives
After completing this course, the participant will be able to:
• Describe at least 2 events from the history of the development of play therapy
• Select play therapy materials such as sand tray miniatures, puppets, and creative art supplies.
• Demonstrate 3 ways to create emotionally safe spaces for children with the Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) approach.
• Utilize therapists’ reflective statements and techniques for setting limits in Child-Centered Play Therapy.
• Identify each level on the continuum of directive, child-esponsive and child-centered (non-directive) play therapy and give an example of the therapist’s behaviors at each level.
• Restate four considerations for parent consultations and involvement in the play therapy process.
• Describe 2 principles of temperament in play therapy to parent psychoeducation education through a practice exercise.
• Show 3 ways to use play therapy to teach coping skills to children through movement and game-based interventions
• Demonstrate a guided play therapy technique for treating anxiety by applying Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy theory
To register for this live virtual workshop please visit: www.annbeckleyforest.com/current-trainings
This course content is based on a publication that has been peer-reviewed, the scientific standard for evaluating academic work. All studies and scientifically derived evidence have limitations that should be considered. If you have any questions about the accuracy or limitations of the content, please contact us at
support@ce-classes.com and we will get back to you.
