ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on ‘playing in time’ in paediatric palliative care, describing current service provision and approaches adopted in children's hospices in the United Kingdom. It draws on the authors’ experience of facilitating music therapy and dramatherapy interventions with young people diagnosed with life-limiting conditions. Through exploring two different vignettes, the chapter examines the role of identity, intersubjectivity, and collaboration in the therapeutic process. The authors explore a phenomenological approach, with an analysis that discusses contemporary issues in the Arts therapies relating to life-limited young people's transition to adulthood. The portrayal of clinical work demonstrates how ‘playing in time’ with the needs of young people requires therapists to revisit and challenge the boundaries of clinical practice. In doing so, this provides space for their legacy, for their story to be told, in the way that they wish.
