Bodhi Tree Play Therapy
Creative therapy for children and young people
About
I'm Charlie Dalais. I am an independent Play Therapist and Creative Arts Counsellor working around Monmouthshire and Bristol.
My previous role as the Lead Children's Creative Therapist at the Bourne Family Project in Bristol involved waiting list management, allocating therapists to clients, liaising with families and other professionals, as well as building up trusting therapeutic relationships with the children and families I worked with as their play therapist.
Having worked as a Play Therapist since I began my training in 2007, I qualified in 2012 with a distinction in my PGDip. I completed the post qualifying course in Creative Arts Counselling in 2025. My background is in psychology. I achieved a 2:1 BSc honours degree in psychology in 2002. After this I worked in a busy mainstream secondary school as a learning support assistant, before moving to Bristol and spending four years as a Family Support Worker for South Gloucestershire Social Services Department for Children and Young People.
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I have completed two counselling certificates (one adult, one children and young people), the Big Toes Little Toes 'Parent Child Attachment Play' practitioner training, as well as the Bath Trauma Recovery Centre's Certificate in Therapeutic Mentoring. I am up to date with first aid and safeguarding training, and have attended many CPD courses over the years. I particularly enjoyed hearing Dan Hughes deliver his 'Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy: attachment focused treatment for childhood trauma and abuse' workshop in 2013.
I provide 1-1 Play Therapy and Creative Arts Counselling in schools or other settings.
​If you know a child or young person who you feel would benefit, please contact me. We can talk through your worries and wishes to make a therapy plan.
Play Therapy Service
What is Play Therapy and Creative Arts Counselling?
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Play Therapy is one of several Creative Arts Therapies. Play Therapists use art, puppets, clay, sand tray, roleplay toys, play dough, dolls house, drama and storytelling, allowing a trusting and non-judgemental therapeutic relationship to grow between child and therapist. This helps children to process difficult feelings in a way that is natural to them, through play. Therapists will join in with a child as they develop a puppet show about a lonely lion, or will sit 'in prison' whilst the child doles out prison food. Teenagers may paint or draw, or use anything in the therapy room, or may choose only to talk about their experiences. I integrate the counselling skills you would recognise in an adult counselling session into the sessions I have with teenagers.
Play Therapy and Creative Arts Counselling can help to make painful memories less intense and increase resilience.
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