A to Z of services

The Indigo Team

We support Children and Families through Bereavement, Trauma & Change

Therapy Team:

We have a team of HCPC-Registered Creative Arts Therapists   

Dramatherapy is a form of Psychotherapy but instead of just talking, we use the creative arts as a tool for exploring and expressing feelings.

Through using Creative Arts and play, we facilitate children and young people to explore feelings, thoughts, losses and changes in their lives. Creative Arts therapy can offer a way to express & communicate that gives equal validity to body and mind within the dramatic context; enabling the client to explore difficult and painful life experiences through an indirect, safe and metaphoric approach. Our work is client led giving the children and young people autonomy and agency in a life situation where often they have little to none.

Dramatherapy is particularly helpful intervention for children and young people where verbal communication may be difficult due to physical, cultural, or psychological factors.  Or where there has been trauma.  The Dramatherapist c reates a Safe, contained and creative space to look at difficult feelings and situations in the client’s life. A place to tell YOUR story that allows you to explore your feelings and thoughts, to give them space and a place to be heard. It’s a place to bring questions and make some sense of your experiences.  We aim to give possibility for therapeutic change to take place and individual strategies to be created and resilience formed.

Clients do not need to have previous experience or skill in acting, theatre, music art or drama. Dramatherapists are trained to enable clients to find the most suitable medium for them to engage in group or individual therapy to address and resolve, or make troubling issues more bearable.

 

Criteria for Therapy

• Life limiting or life threatening conditions
• Child at the end of life
• Siblings of children with life limiting or life threatening conditions
• Bereaved siblings
• Bereaved children when a parent or sibling who has died at Croydon University Hospital
• Children who have a life impacting chronic condition such as; sickle cell, cancer, epilepsy, cardiac condition 
• Those who have experienced a medical Traum
• Children with a Learning Disability and behavioural challenges (these children can only be referred by The Tulip Neuro Disability Team)

 

Play Specialists:

We have two Play Specialists who work on Rainbow ward, Children’s Day Surgery and in ED. Their job it is to offer distraction and preparation work for children and young people who visit these areas. They also coordinate activities and work closely with patients and families to provide lots of fun activities tailored to the interests of each child. This helps patients maintain some normality and ensures children don't miss out on being children.

 

Family Bereavement Link Worker:

• Our family bereavement link worker walks alongside families when a child has died. 
• Guides and represents the family through the Child Death Overview panel
• Offers emotional support to the family
• Can signpost to appropriate internal and external services
• Will offer the school, children, staff and the school community advice, support and guidance   in breaking the news of the death and putting in emotional support to help staff and children cope with the death.
• Support’s staff in the hospital and community who have been involved with these deaths   including facilitating debrief sessions