The 2026 Black Play Therapy® Symposium is where culture leads learning and play therapy practice transforms to meet the urgent needs of Black children impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline. This is not a symposium about theory you’ll apply someday. This is intensive, hands-on clinical training where you’ll build, create, practice, and leave with interventions you can use Monday morning with the children already on your caseload.

Black children are disproportionately suspended, expelled, labeled, and funneled into juvenile justice systems. Research documents how cognitive biases, implicit bias, confirmation bias, surveillance bias, and attributional bias, shape how adults perceive and respond to Black children’s behavior, creating referrals to play therapy for emotional and behavioral issues that are consequences of systemic bias, not indicators of pathology. Mental health professionals encounter these children across all practice settings: schools, private practice, community mental health agencies, and juvenile justice facilities. By the time children reach our therapy rooms, bias has already shaped their story. The referral says “aggressive.” The file says “defiant.” The system says “problem child.” Our work is to see past the bias, treat the actual trauma, and reclaim stolen childhoods through therapeutic play.

This two-day symposium centers Black culture, Black childhood, and Black healing in every session. You won’t sit through endless PowerPoint presentations. You’ll experience play therapy the way Black children need to experience it: through expressive arts, through building and creating with your hands, through storytelling and metaphor, through experiential learning that honors how culture shapes clinical practice. Using PlayMobil Pro materials with the Pro.Play® facilitation method, you’ll build three-dimensional models that make invisible bias visible, mapping systems and identifying intervention points. Through arts-based activities, you’ll externalize experiences of bias and practice techniques you’ll use with clients. With LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology, you’ll explore your own bias challenges and construct concrete action plans. This is learning through doing, through play, through the very modalities we bring to Black children in our clinical work.

The symposium integrates play therapy theoretical frameworks, child-centered, Adlerian, cognitive-behavioral, and trauma-focused approaches, with evidence-based interventions specifically designed for Black children experiencing bias-related trauma. You’ll hear from a panel of licensed play therapy practitioners working across the full continuum: a school-based counselor and school-based social worker navigating IEP meetings and suspension hearings, a community mental health therapist treating children with thick files full of deficit language, and a corrections-based counselor providing play therapy in restrictive settings where childhood has been stolen long before incarceration. These aren’t abstract case studies. These are real practitioners sharing real interventions that work in real settings with real constraints.

Through intensive skills-based workshops led by nationally recognized experts, you’ll develop clinical competencies you can implement immediately. You’ll learn culturally responsive play therapy assessment techniques that distinguish trauma responses from conduct problems, challenging the biased narratives that arrive with referrals. You’ll practice evidence-based interventions for racial trauma, learning to integrate approaches like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills into play-based formats for children presenting with behavioral issues. You’ll adapt play therapy techniques for restrictive environments, detention centers, residential facilities, court-ordered therapy, where resources are limited but need is urgent. You’ll master clinical documentation practices that protect Black children instead of pathologizing them, rewriting progress notes to use strength-based language that challenges deficit narratives. You’ll develop advocacy strategies for speaking up in multidisciplinary team meetings when you hear biased assumptions about the children you serve.

This symposium honors that culture leads learning. The content is grounded in research on how cognitive biases operate in systems and how play therapy responds clinically, but the delivery is rooted in Black cultural traditions of storytelling, creativity, collective learning, and resistance through joy. You’ll leave not just with knowledge, but with community, a network of play therapy practitioners committed to accountability, consultation, and ongoing growth. You’ll leave not just with awareness, but with action plans, specific interventions to try immediately following the 2026 Black Play Therapy® Symposium, documentation changes to make immediately, advocacy strategies to use in your next team meeting. You’ll leave not just inspired, but equipped.

Whether you’re a Registered Play Therapist seeking advanced training in culturally responsive practice, a school-based play therapy practitioner navigating biased referrals daily, a play therapy student preparing to serve Black children, or a mental health professional integrating play therapy into clinical work across settings, this symposium meets you where you are and takes you where you need to be. The tools are concrete. The interventions are ready to use. The learning is experiential. The culture is centered. And the children are waiting.