Therapeutic Play and Children’s Healthcare

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bailey]

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.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

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for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran), my constituent Ambia has written to me to highlight the fact that funding has been withdrawn for her level 7 apprenticeship in play therapy.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?

[Mr Bailey]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) for securing this debate on such an important topic. I am grateful to him for sharing Hari’s story, and to Hari and Sarah for making the trip to Parliament. I have always believed in bringing patient voices to the heart of what we do in Parliament, and I hope they both leave safe in the knowledge that this Government are listening.

I strongly agree with what hon. Friends have said about the relationship between play and medicine. I volunteered in a healthcare setting as a play worker many moons ago, but more than 30 years later, the important impact of that work has stayed with me. Play and medicine are not in competition, and it is disappointing that Sarah had to fight so hard for play to remain an essential part of Hari’s care. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead got a constructive response from Whipps Cross, but he is right to say that coverage of play services varies across the country.

Investing in our children is not just a moral mission; it is a downpayment on a better future. Children do not stop being children when they enter a hospital or a GP clinic. It is important to treat children like children when they are at home, at school or in hospital. There is growing evidence that therapeutic play can mitigate risks of trauma. We recognise that play services are integral to paediatric care, not a nice-to-have. We published the NHS England and Starlight Play Well toolkit in June last year, and I am delighted to see representatives of Starlight in the Public Gallery today. That included the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England. NHS England is making sure that every manager of health play services knows about the Play Well toolkit across a wide range of settings. We are promoting it in community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices and acute paediatric wards. A range of communication channels have been used to raise awareness, including engagement with services via professional bodies, messaging via the chief nursing officer, and ongoing promotion through operational delivery networks directly to trusts and with professional groups.

The NHS is also undertaking evidence-based initiatives such as the iSupport programme, which focuses on ensuring children’s rights and wellbeing. The iSupport checklist aims to help professionals deliver safe, compassionate and child-centred care. The programme is already being picked up by children’s wards across the country. I look forward to meeting Starlight. We have been trying to get this meeting in the diary for some time, and I am delighted that we have managed to do that. I look forward to working with Starlight to see where we can go further to help kids like Hari avoid childhood trauma.

[Jen Craft]

Recently, my daughter had an in-patient stay, and I saw a Starlight notice on the door of the playroom. Having met Starlight, it gave me quite a lot of confidence. In fact, thanks to the play therapist, the most traumatic thing about my daughter’s visit was when she had to leave, as she had such a good time. That was in an inner-city hospital; we also have a regional hospital that does not have the same resources. Can the Minister say how play therapy can be rolled out across the country so that every child can benefit?

[Ashley Dalton]

As I stated earlier, we are promoting the Play Well toolkit right across the country through a variety of communication methods. We look forward to a variety of healthcare settings using that toolkit to deliver in their local areas.

That moves me on to mental health. Under this Government, all children will have access to a mental health support team in their school or college by the end of this Parliament. We are also committed to opening 50 Young Futures hubs over the next four years, which will bring together services to help young people at a community level. There have been calls for us to go further on the children’s health workforce. The Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), is absolutely committed to making sure that we have the right skills to care for patients, including children, when they need it. We are working through the changes and what they will mean for different professional groups. I know that mental health will be at the top of the agenda, not least for children.

Health play therapists are trained through foundation degrees. The toolkit that has been developed sets out clearly how services should support practical training of specialists. Games and active play build social and emotional skills and support children’s wellbeing. We want every child to feel safe from harm and for their families to feel supported. We know that the poorest children are more likely to develop long-term illnesses. That is why it is shameful that child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010.

With more than 4 million children now living in poverty in the UK and 800,000 children using food banks to eat, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor took the necessary decision to fund the biggest reduction in child poverty of any Budget this century. We are expanding free school meals to half a million kids whose parents are on low incomes, and lifting hundreds of thousands out of poverty by removing the two-child benefit cap.

In addition, there is a £126 million funding boost for the family hubs and Start for Life programme this financial year. Best Start family hubs will be rolled out to every local authority from April. We have kept our manifesto promise to restrict junk food advertising targeted at children. We have announced improvements to the soft drink industry levy, and we have invested £11 million in local authorities to deploy supervised toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds in schools and nurseries in the most deprived areas of England.

On neighbourhood health, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead raised an important point about multidisciplinary teams for children and young people, which should take an holistic approach to looking after children. The aim is to embed general paediatricians in primary care to give specialist paediatric advice and reduce the need for out-patient paediatric referrals. Those discussions ideally bring together wider health, social care and educational specialists. The make-up of the teams is locally determined by integrated care boards, but play specialists could absolutely be involved as part of a neighbourhood team.