Important Notice

It has come to our attention that one or two persons in Hong Kong are spreading false rumours and completely unsubstantiated information about APAC’s courses and the PTI standards of training and practice.

We are not sure about the motivation of these individuals. It may be because they are offering their own training events and feel threatened by competition. Or it may be that they resent that others perceived as rivals, will be practising having received a better standard of training than they have.

In essence their main claim is that the PTI model leads to unsafe practice with children. This is completely unfounded. The PTI standards were first set in 1986 and have been updated several times since. During this time, during which thousands of practitioners have applied the standards all over the world, not one complaint has been made about unsafe practice. On the other hand, PTI has the only research based on over 8000 cases which shows that our model of play therapy is very safe and effective. Between 72% and 84% of children will show a positive change as the result of receiving play therapy delivered to our standards – please see our latest results.

Remember also that the APAC courses in the UK are fully accredited by a reputable British university – Leeds Beckett (formerly Leeds Metropolitan) University.

We are completely in favour of constructive criticism, backed by evidence, but not malicious, destructive comments such as this.

Claims made about other play therapy courses are usually based on opinion, anecdotal statements or vague claims – not hard data about the impact of the training on clinical practice.

If confronted with similar statements or claims that are not backed by evidence but are purely personal opinions:

• Please let us know the name and address of the person with an email address and/or telephone number. PTI will then contact the person asking them to provide hard evidence for their claims or else to completely withdraw the statements with an apology. If this is not forthcoming PTI will take legal action and/or submit a complaint to the person’s professional organisation for bringing the profession into disrepute.
• Ask the person for factual evidence to back up their claim, not personal opinions or hearsay. Also how much they know about APAC’s PTI accredited courses and our evidence base. In the absence of satisfactory responses, remind the person that misleading statements of this type are unethical and may lead to legal action, with substantial costs

We are sorry that we have had to post this notice but the history of psychological therapies provides a number of precedents whenever an innovative approach becomes successful and upsets traditional views: Jung v Freud, Bowlby v Klein, psychodynamic v client centred, cognitive v unconscious processing. So perhaps outbreaks such as we have in Hong Kong are inevitable. Ideological wars based on rigidly held views are counter-productive and represent the dark ages.

Surely what is important is bringing a safe and effective intervention to as many children as possible, not personal vendettas.

PTI’s philosophy is that there is a place for many theories and tools to help the children. Although we will continue to point out what we consider to be the benefits of our evolutionary approach to play therapy, we never intentionally make negative comments about others. Isn’t this the way civilisation progresses?