ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the use of play in two distinct but overlapping areas of work, children with disabilities and children in hospital. Play therapists and play workers, teachers and nursery nurses, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and sometimes social workers and psychologists, all these may use play in work with children with developmental delay or learning difficulties, or other disabilities, short or long term, which may be physical, mental or both. Play provision for young children may be in ordinary preschool playgroups or nursery schools into which these children are integrated, in special playgroups and opportunity groups, in educational home-teaching services, in a hospital setting or a child development centre. Play work for older children may take place in schools, including residential schools, and in holiday play schemes and ‘handicapped’ adventure playgrounds. Hospital play specialists, teachers, nurses and nursery nurses, and occupational therapists use play in work with children with illnesses and disabilities who are in hospital for long or short stays.
