Ann Beckley-Forest, LCSW, RPT-S, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Buffalo, New York. Her specialties include attachment and child and adolescent trauma, and she also works with adult survivors. She has been a play therapist for over 20 years and is both a Registered Play Therapy Supervisor and Approved Provider of play therapy continuing education through the Association for Play Therapy, as well as being a past Board member of the New York branch of APT. She is also an EMDR Approved Consultant and Virtual Basic Trainer and an affiliated faculty member of the Child Trauma Institute. She provides consultation in person and remotely, and gives training locally and internationally. Her primary interest is in the intersection of play therapy and EMDR and has published on this topic including as co-editor of EMDR with Children in the Play Therapy Room: An Integrated Approach (2020).
Up to 12 contact hours/CE's awarded for 2 day attendees: APT Approved Provider 98-040 Playtherapy credit awarded only to mental health professionals.
Conference Details
8:30a - 4:30p daily with two 15 minute breaks and 1 ¼ hour for lunch.
lunch & snacks included in conference price!
Day 1 - April 23, 202
Title: Parts at Play with Gestalt Play Therapy
Description: Exposure to severe and long-term trauma can lead children to exhibit concerning behaviors such as rages, destruction, self-harm, and switching into different self-states or emotional parts which are now understood as related to attachment wounds and dissociation and the accompanying fragmentation of the self. In this workshop, participants will practice an experiential approach to parts of the self through the projective power of play, (especially Gestalt play therapy) and expressive arts activities, and explore how to incorporate trauma processing in a titrated manner through therapeutic storytelling.
Learning Objectives:
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Participants will be able to describe 5 aspects of how dissociative fragmentation presents in our child and teen clients
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Participants will be able to distinguish and describe 2 examples of how to initiate cooperation with self-states and use developmentally appropriate ego-state language through play therapy modalities such as dolls/puppets, storytelling, sandtray or art.
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Participants will apply principles and practices from Gestalt play therapy in a practice session to promote contact with protective parts of self
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Participants will analyze a case example and apply play-based neurosequential thinking through regulation activities.
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Participants will describe the use of therapeutic storytelling in curiosity and compassion for wounded parts of the self.
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Participants will describe 2 examples of engaging and structuring caregiver participation in attachment repair with parts work.
Day 2 - April 24, 2027
Title: Adoption themes in Play Therapy including race, culture and ethnicity
Description: While adoption is often seen as the solution to the problem of child maltreatment, the disruption of primary attachments is also a risk factor for children after placement. Play therapists can play an important role in recognizing the impact of these attachment wounds as well as themes of belonging and identity formation that become increasingly pressing for children as they grow up in adoptive families, foster families, and kinship adoption, and even in blended families, step families and multiracial families. We will look at a prescriptive play therapy approach to this work including the themes that can emerge in the child’s play, approaching the traumatic history of disruption and placement through the attachment narratives, and how to support the adoptive parents in adjusting their expectations and strategies. Of special note will be the important considerations related to race, ethnicity and culture that often impact the adoption kinship network and ways to invite those themes in the play therapy process.Adoption themes in Play Therapy including race, culture and ethnicity
Learning Objectives:
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Describe 2 examples of attachment wounds that play therapists should be attending to in play therapy.
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Describe the core themes in adoption and how these surface in the play therapy room
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Describe the key principles in supporting adoptive parents as partners in their children’s healing from attachment wounds.
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Describe a prescriptive play therapy approach to healing attachment wounds through play therapy attachment narratives
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Describe the process for play therapists broaching and responding to themes of belonging related to race, ethnicity and culture within adoptive families.
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Analyze case examples with adoption, race, culture and belonging as themes.