Helping Children to Overcome Fear

The Healing Power of Play

Russell Evans

With two articles by Jean Evans
Foreword by Dr Richard House

Critical illness can cause overwhelming feelings of abandonment and loss. Difficult for adults to face alone, for children the experience is magnified. They have to leave home for an alien hospital world, without the comfort of familiar daily rhythms.

Jean Evans was a play leader who recognised ahead of her time the importance of enabling children to give voice to their feelings, providing opportunities for play and working in partnership with parents. These requirements are now core principles in the training and working practice in the fields of nursery nursing, play therapy, childcare and Paediatrics.

Jean Evans' practical insights embrace:

• Child development through play and imitation;
  
• Captivating children's interest; encouragement as a source of healing;
  
• Practical guidelines for helping children to feel safe and happy;
  
• Dying children and caring parents.

Full of touching and useful examples of how Jean applied this in her work, Helping Children to Overcome Fear serves to remind us that these principles are relevant not only to the critically ill but can be used to support all children, everywhere.

This inspirational book should become mandatory reading for Paediatricians and Play Therapists … indeed any adult who is serious in their desire to be alongside a child needing to face their fear. It gently embraces the skills of respectful listening, creativity and fun - instantly recognisable to a discerning child.
Julie Stokes, Consultant Psychologist and Founder of Winston's Wish, a Grief Support Programme for Children

Jean Evans was a remarkable woman who worked for many years as a Play Leader at Llandough Hospital looking after critically ill children ...she was brilliantly innovative in her work with the dying child and this, perhaps, is her most lasting legacy as her thoughts and deeds influenced, and still do, the doctors and nurses who look after these children.
Dr Roger Verrier Jones, Paediatrician, Llandough Hospital