Reflections on brief, play-based work, similar to ‘Special Time’, undertaken by a student volunteer in a children’s residential institution

ABSTRACT The author, then a psychology student, describes a piece of work she undertook as a volunteer in a former Communist European country, in an institution designated as a residential hospital. The writer had initially intended to use psychoanalytic observation to observe deprived and institutionalised children as research for her thesis. The children who were admitted were all diagnosed as organically learning disabled or as autistic. Some of them were clearly traumatised, deprived and neglected before and after admission, and the writer believes many would have benefitted from a long-term, play-based intervention such as ‘Special Time’ (Cavalli & Williams, 2019). She was drawn to an eight-year-old girl, who seemed flat and withdrawn, but nonetheless seemed to draw in the volunteer and to come to life a little, during the single week when the two were together. There were signs of awakening and a response to the lively company offered as well as to the pain of daily separation and of permanent parting at the end of it. The paper is the culmination of many years of supervision, reflective writing and on the pain of such an intense encounter for both worker and child.