Qualifications & Training
I, Mathew Walk-ley, am a qualified and BAPT-registered children and family therapist focusing on emotional and mental well-being. I specialise and have undertaken further training in:
· Play and Creative Therapy – children & young people
· Sand and SandStory Therapy – young people or adults, families & groups
· Autplay (Autism) Therapy – individuals with autism
· Outdoor Therapy – schools & groups
· Child-Parent Relationship Therapy – parents
· Teleplay Therapy – individuals requiring online/remote therapy
I hold a master’s degree in Play (Mental Health) Therapy. As a qualified and registered play therapist, I have a specialist focus on working with children, families and schools. I have extensive prior experience working with children with special educational needs and also hold a master’s degree in Special Educational Needs, with a particular focus on autism and neurodiversity. This underpins my understanding of how each child uniquely experiences the world and supports a highly individualised approach to therapy.
My practice is informed by current research, ongoing professional development, and direct experience working with children, families, and schools. I work in line with professional standards and ethical guidelines, ensuring that all support is safe, appropriate, and grounded in best practice. I also have regular professional supervision, hold an enhanced DBS certificate, and have completed safeguarding training at Level 3, which supports safe and accountable practice.
As part of my commitment to high quality work, I regularly update my training and continue to develop my skills so the support I offer remains relevant, effective, and responsive to the needs of the children, families, and professionals I work with.
About My Approach
Hello, I’m Mathew, a qualified mental health Play Therapist.
I offer specialist support to children, adults, families, schools, and professionals navigating a wide range of emotional and behavioural challenges, including neurodiversity, trauma, attachment difficulties, adoption-related needs, early experiences of separation or loss, and broader concerns around emotional wellbeing. I also work with children who may be finding school, friendships, confidence, or emotional regulation difficult, even where there is no clear diagnosis or identified need. With a strong foundation in child development, neurodiversity-affirming practice, trauma-informed approaches, and attachment-focused therapy, I bring a calm, grounded, and highly attuned presence to my work.
At the heart of my approach is a simple but important belief: children do not need to be “fixed”; they need to be understood. Children often do not have the words to explain what is happening internally, but they communicate powerfully through play, creativity, and expression. My role is to listen to that communication. I provide a warm, calm, and emotionally safe space where children can explore their thoughts and feelings in ways that feel natural to them, whether through play, imagination, creativity, or sometimes a bit of mess. This process supports children in making sense of their experiences, building confidence, strengthening emotional regulation, and developing a deeper sense of security in themselves.
My practice is shaped not only by professional training and experience, but also by lived experience across childhood and adulthood, including neurodiversity, caregiving roles, bereavement, and diverse family dynamics. This brings an added depth of relational understanding, allowing me to connect with the emotional worlds of children and families in a compassionate, authentic, and attuned way.
My approach is gentle, child-led, and grounded in deep respect for each child’s individuality. I follow their pace, their interests, and their way of communicating, supporting meaningful and lasting change that feels safe and sustainable. Alongside direct work with children, I work closely with parents and carers, offering thoughtful insight into what a child’s behaviour may be communicating and how to respond in ways that build connection rather than conflict. When children feel understood, family life often begins to feel calmer, more connected, and more manageable.
I also collaborate with schools and professionals, supporting them to understand behaviour as communication and to create environments that are responsive, inclusive, and emotionally attuned. My work is rooted in co-regulation and in recognising that a child’s wellbeing is shaped not only within themselves, but within the relationships and systems around them. I offer reflective guidance and practical strategies that help reduce distress, strengthen relationships, and support children to genuinely thrive.
I understand that parenting and supporting children can, at times, feel overwhelming, and reaching out for support is a positive and meaningful step. If you feel that the way I work aligns with your needs, I would be pleased to work alongside you.
Commitment to Inclusive Practice
At Horizon Play Therapy everyone is welcomed and supported with respect and understanding. Support is adapted to each individual, recognising that every person experiences the world differently. There is no expectation for individuals to fit a set way of thinking, behaving, or communicating. Instead, the focus is on understanding each individual’s unique needs, strengths, and ways of expressing themselves.
Horizon Play Therapy aims to create a space where everyone feels safe to be themselves, without judgment or pressure to change who they are. Differences are recognised as valid and meaningful, not something to be fixed. Horizon Play Therapy stands for an inclusive, socially conscious and justice-driven approach to emotional wellbeing, rooted in dignity, collective care and the belief that every person has inherent worth. It is grounded in the understanding that no person should be divided into categories of normal or other, and instead affirms that every mind, body and way of being holds equal value and deserves care, safety and understanding within the context of their environments, histories and survival. No one is required to explain themselves or justify their existence in order to receive care.
The practice is firmly neurodiversity affirming and actively anti ableist. It challenges dominant systems that have historically pathologised difference in thinking, feeling, communicating and existing. Rather than measuring people against rigid expectations or narrow developmental standards, it commits to listening deeply, adapting continuously and meeting each child, young person, family member and professional with openness, flexibility and genuine respect. The work is grounded in listening, adapting and resisting frameworks that were never designed with all people in mind.
Everyone who comes into contact with Horizon Play Therapy is welcomed without conditions, with no expectation to mask, perform, conform or self suppress in order to be accepted. The practice actively rejects compliance based models of care and systems that demand people become more acceptable to environments that are themselves limited. Communication is understood as varied, shifting and deeply individual, and every form of expression is regarded as valid, meaningful and fully welcomed. The space is intentionally designed to feel safe enough for people to be fully themselves without fear of judgement or correction, and it actively refuses shame based approaches that have historically harmed children, young people and families.
Respect for children and young people is non negotiable and central to the therapeutic process. Each person is valued exactly as they are and for who they are becoming, recognised as an expert in their own lived experience. They are not directed into fixed ways of being, but supported to explore their own rhythms, preferences, themes of play and emotional language at their own pace, with full permission to engage or not engage at any time. Autonomy is not conditional on behaviour, participation or productivity, but is honoured as a fundamental right.
Therapy is not about changing who someone is or shaping behaviour to fit external expectations or social convenience. Instead, it supports children, young people and families to feel safer within themselves, to make sense of their experiences and to rebuild a sense of internal safety in a world that can feel overwhelming and exclusionary. Distress is understood as communication, often shaped by trauma, unmet need, pressure and environments that do not accommodate difference.
There is also a clear understanding that distress is not located solely within the individual, but is shaped and intensified by wider systems and environments. This includes unequal and overstretched social and economic structures, alongside home, school, health and broader social contexts that often prioritise conformity over care. Because of this, the work extends beyond the individual to the systems around them, focusing on reducing pressure, increasing understanding and creating conditions where people feel more supported, steadier and able to exist in their own way, alongside families, carers, schools and wider support systems.
Families, parents, carers and professionals are held within a shared framework of care, support and accountability, where collaboration is both compassionate and reflective. The work supports emotional insight and a deeper understanding of distress in context, moving away from blame or oversimplified interpretations of behaviour. Behaviour is understood as outward expression of internal experience, including distress, overwhelm, communication differences and responses shaped by environments that may not align with typical developmental expectations or social norms. This process supports more responsive, relational and humane environments across home, school and community settings, recognising that meaningful change is relational and built through stronger support networks.
The therapeutic approach is grounded in relational, trauma informed, socially conscious and justice oriented principles. It understands people not as isolated individuals, but as shaped by systems, histories, power structures and material conditions. Psychological distress is often produced, intensified or maintained by unequal environments, early relational ruptures and wider social pressures. Healing is therefore not a private task or individual performance, but a relational and collective process that depends on safety, attunement and consistent, trustworthy relationships, alongside environments that reduce harm rather than reproduce it.
At its core, the approach rejects models that locate the problem solely within the person. It acknowledges the impact of exclusion, ableism, poverty, educational pressure and systemic neglect on emotional wellbeing. It is built on the belief that people have an inherent capacity for growth and healing when met with genuine acceptance, empathy and stability, and when they are not required to adapt themselves to systems that were never designed with their needs in mind. Growth is supported through relationships that do not demand conformity, suppression or compliance as the price of care, but instead actively affirm difference, dignity and autonomy as essential to emotional survival and recovery.
Horizon Play Therapy is explicitly committed to anti racist practice and the ongoing work of challenging systemic, historical and everyday structures that disadvantage Black and brown communities and others who are marginalised within a dominant majority culture. It recognises that racism is not only individual prejudice, but is embedded within institutions, language, access to support and assumptions about behaviour, emotion and potential. It seeks to create spaces where young people and families who are from the Black and brown communities and others who are marginalised within a dominant majority culture, are met with safety, cultural humility and respect, and are not positioned through deficit based narratives that have too often shaped their experiences of education, health and care systems.
Horizon Play Therapy is unapologetically LGBTQIA+ affirming and rooted in the active liberation of all gender identities, expressions and sexualities. It does not tolerate or engage with any framework that pathologises, debates or seeks to regulate identity, recognising these as forms of systemic harm. Gender and sexuality are understood as inherently valid, self defined and beyond the authority of institutions or societal norms to approve or deny. This is a space where LGBTQIA+ children, young people and families are not merely included but actively centred, protected and empowered. No one is required to explain themselves or justify their existence in order to receive care.
Horizon Play Therapy takes an uncompromising stance against conversion therapy in all its forms, recognising it as harmful, unethical and rooted in systems of oppression, control and erasure. It rejects any ideology or intervention that seeks to alter, suppress or correct a person’s identity to fit dominant norms. The work is rooted in liberation, not compliance, and actively resists practices that uphold heteronormative or cisnormative standards as benchmarks for wellbeing. There is no place here for coercion disguised as care.
Instead, the work stands alongside individuals in reclaiming identity, voice and autonomy. It holds a commitment to creating space where people are not shaped to fit the world as it is, but supported to exist fully within it while also challenging the systems that limit that possibility.
Horizon Play Therapy ultimately stands as a commitment to creating spaces that resist harm, reduce oppression and expand what care can look like. It is guided by the values of courage, innovation, empathy, empowerment and stewardship, not as abstract ideals but as active, lived responsibilities shaping every aspect of the work. The vision is not adjustment to unjust systems, but the creation of more humane and just ones, where children, young people and families are not required to shrink themselves in order to receive support, but are met fully, held carefully and recognised as already worthy, supported in being entirely themselves with dignity, care and respect, while contributing toward a more compassionate and equitable future for all.
