Reanne Texeira

Certified Play Therapist

About me/Areas of interest

My name is Reanne Texeira and I am a Certified Play Therapist. I am from Coventry, West Midlands and I provide play therapy sessions across Rugby and Warwickshire. I have worked with children in various settings over the last 9 years, including nurseries, primary schools, specialist schools/resource provisions and children’s psychological services.

Working in these various settings has given me the opportunity to learn and develop my understanding and skills to support children with both special educational needs and social, emotional and mental health challenges. My early experience of supporting children in nurseries with special needs led me to explore how a variety of settings could be more inclusive of their differences and challenges and make changes to their practice. As a result, this is something I went on to explore in my dissertation and an area that I have continued to be passionate about throughout my career. As well as neurodiverse inclusion, I also have a special interest in Autism which was developed by my experience in a special needs school that catered for children with complex and profound needs. It was here that I developed a lot of my knowledge and understanding of autism and began to input different interventions that helped children with their communication and life skills.

Experience and qualifications

I completed my undergraduate honours degree in Early Years and Special Inclusive Education at Nottingham Trent university in 2016. During this time, I was also able to gain experience in my placement supporting children with special needs in a nursery, alongside another nursery where I worked part time. It was here that I was able to continue to develop my inclusion skills and work with a wide range of children with different learning disabilities and additional needs. As a result, I was able to conduct my research for my dissertation here and learn more about the complexities and barriers to inclusion in children’s settings.

After completing my undergraduate degree, I went on to gain experience in a special needs school for several years where I built my knowledge and skills on autism and developed a special interest in this area.

Whilst continuing to work here, I then went on to complete my postgraduate degree in Play Therapy at Leeds Beckett University. This led to me qualifying as a play therapist and providing play therapy sessions to children with a wide range of difficulties such as social and emotional challenges, learning disabilities, autism, ADHD, trauma, bereavement, anxiety and many more. I am now a Certified Play Therapist registered under Play Therapy United Kingdom (PTUK) 201701952, and accredited by the Professional Standard’s Authority, an independent body who are accountable to parliament.

More recently I have undertaken my ADOS 2 and ADI-R training so that I can explore autism assessments in more depth and develop my knowledge further as an assessor.