Petra's Play Therapy
A warm welcome to Petra’s Play Therapy. My name is Petra Jeffrey-Hofman and I am an accredited Play and Creative Arts Therapist, based in Witley, near Godalming in Surrey. I deliver play therapy sessions to children aged 4-14 in my private practice, as well as in local schools. Under special circumstances I can also visit children at their home address.
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I am registered with Play Therapy UK (PTUK), a professional body which is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), an independent organisation, accountable to the UK Parliament, which safeguards commitment to high standards and public protection. I am DBS checked, GDPR compliant and hold professional liability insurance. I work strictly within PTUK’s ethical framework and receive monthly clinical supervision.
Play Therapy UK: https://playtherapy.org.uk/
Professional Standards Authority: https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/home
I use the Integrative Holistic Model of Play Therapy, a model validated by the PTUK clinical evidence base. This model integrates the therapeutic use of a wide range of toys and creative arts media (the Play Therapy Tool-Kit), works with unconscious as well as conscious processes, uses non-directive and directive approaches and integrates research with practice.
A bit more about me
Raised in the Netherlands, I moved to the UK in 1990 after completing my masters degree at Leiden University to work residentially with children with special educational needs in the Camphill Rudolf Steiner School in Aberdeen.
After twelve years of working within the Camphill Movement, I gained a Post Graduate Certificate in Education and worked as a primary school teacher and literacy lead teacher in Hampshire. During this time my husband and I adopted our daughter, who is now in her mid-twenties. In 2009, I started working for the Specialist Teaching and Educational Psychology Service in south-west Surrey. Whilst working as an advisory teacher for this team, I completed postgraduate diploma studies in speech language and communication needs in children, a subject I feel very passionate about.
Having gained this qualification, I started working as a specialist teacher and was in charge of a unit for children with developmental language disorder and/or autism attached to a local junior school, an extremely rewarding role which I fulfilled from September 2011 till July 2023. Whilst in this post, I developed a strong interest in finding ways to support children struggling with their social, emotional and mental health beyond the classroom environment. This ultimately led me to reducing my teaching commitments and taking up post graduate studies in play therapy. I graduated in June 2020 and have delivered over 500 clinical hours of individual and group-based play therapy to date.
My philosophy
We all wish for our children to have a happy and carefree childhood, but sometimes life’s events get in the way. We like to believe that our children are resilient and will bounce back from whatever life throws at them, but sometimes this proves difficult, and they get a little lost on the way.
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I passionately believe that childhood is a very precious time, a time which lays the foundations for the rest of life. In my thirty years of working with children across a range of settings, I have observed again and again that a gentle, helping hand and a listening ear at the right time can make a world of difference.
Virginia Axline (1911-1988), one of the pioneers of play therapy, wrote:
“The therapeutic value of this kind of psychotherapy is based upon the child experiencing himself as a capable, responsible person in a relationship that tries to communicate to him two basic truths: that no one never really knows as much about any human being’s inner world as does the individual himself; and that responsible freedom grows and develops from inside the person.”