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Leeds academic shares experience working with Romanian orphans in prestigious lecture
Professor Brown, who is Professor of Playwork in Leeds Beckett’s School of Health, told the audience about his groundbreaking work in Romania. Working with the Leeds based charity, the White Rose Initiative; he developed a project to help abandoned and abused children in a Romanian hospital, after being made aware of their dire circumstances.
He said: “The first time I saw the children in the hospital, it was shocking and hard to take in. Children from the age of nine months to 12 years old were tethered in cots and were all just sitting rocking backwards and forwards. They made no eye contact and didn’t even react to anyone being in the room with them. It was disturbing to see.”
The White Rose Initiative recruited a 19 year old girl called Edit, who had herself grown up in an orphanage, and brought her back to the UK for a ‘crash course’ in Playwork. She spent time at Leeds General Infirmary and in a nursery before returning to Romania to work with the sixteen children in the hospital’s abandoned children's ward. She was joined by another of Professor Brown’s students Sophie, and together they worked and played with the children.
They would go in each morning, untie the children and take them out of the cots, bathe them and feed them before taking them to their playroom where they could play and socialise. At the end of the day, they would return them to their cots where they would be tied up by the nurses and left alone for the night.
Five months after the project began, Professor Brown returned to visit the hospital to see how Edit and Sophie were doing.
“To say I was shocked is an understatement, I just stood there looking at these children who were so different from the first time I had seen them. That moment confirmed for me the immense power of Playwork and the impact it can have. Just by introducing Playwork into the lives of these children, we had made a massive difference. They were no longer sitting rocking, ignoring everything around them, but were able to communicate with each other and us through their play. It was astounding how far they had come in just five months.”
Eighteen months into the project, 13 of the children had either been fostered or adopted. Sadly three were sent to children's mental hospitals because the hospital authorities said they needed extra support.
Professor Brown added: “Being part of this project has completely changed the way I teach Playwork and my views on child development. It’s also changed what I think about some of the expert opinions. I had always known that such work could help a child grow socially, mentally, and physically, but most experts said children would never catch up if they were abused and neglected in their early years. The children we were dealing with were undernourished and very small for their age. I remember a ten-year-old boy who looked more like a toddler. I saw him again 6 years later and he was taller than me! Not only had we helped the children to grow socially and mentally, but this boy had even caught up physically with others of his age.”
Fraser Brown is Professor of Playwork at Leeds Beckett University. His key interests include Playwork, Play Therapy and Children's Wellbeing. He has built up a substantial body of research and practical knowledge of Playwork and the value of this element of children's development. He has produced eight books on the subject, including Play and Playwork: 101 Stories of Children Playing.