(Posted 2025 March)
The Heart Leaf Center: Where Play Therapy Gets to the Heart of the Matter
The mission of the Heart Leaf Center is to be able to serve those families that don’t have access to quality mental health care for their children. During covid, one of the founders of HLC realized a lot of children coming into therapy at her private outpatient clinic didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket. Recently, Volunteer Voices sat down with Program Director Tracey Wilson to talk about HLC’s therapeutic model and how the center has gone from accepting mainly clients on a sliding fee scale to accepting insurance—in four short years. This is an excerpt from that conversation.
Volunteer Voices: What is the Heart Leaf Center’s mission? How long have you been in operation?
Tracey Wilson: The mission is to be able to serve those families that didn’t have access to quality childcare. What we found out during covid is that a lot of children were coming into therapy at one of the founder’s outpatient clinic, and they didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford out-of-pocket costs at the private clinic. So, the Heart Leaf Center was designed in 2021 to be able to serve families that didn’t have insurance and get quality behavioral health services.
We weren’t taking insurance at first. Basically, we operated on a sliding fee scale. Families were paying only $10. That was one of the ways we made it affordable. We were also taking Tricare families at that time, but that was the only insurance we were taking. Maybe 21 percent of families were on Medicaid. And 32 percent paid the $10. We were serving around 378 clients.
Two years later, we started working on getting credentialed with Medicaid. It took about 18 to 19 months to do this. Most of the families paying that $10 had Medicaid. We could start utilizing that, so they have no cost at all. We are now credentialed with Medicaid United Health Care, Aetna Medicaid, and with commercial plans. We are able to serve a lot more families now.
What do you do at HLC?
Play therapy, which is the hardest to explain. Children aren’t like older clients; they don’t come in and do talk therapy. Play therapy was set up for children to come into the room and play with toys and do whatever they want. We have a sand tray, dollhouses, and manipulative dolls and puppets.
We really focus on the relationship and being intentional with them. We watch what they’re doing. We let them know we see them, we hear them, and we use reflecting statements. For instance, if they seemed mad, we’ll say, “You seem like you’re mad.” That’s what they’re playing out in their internal world.
The goals are to build confidence, self-esteem, assurance, and resilience in children. They learn to respect themselves. They learn they are being heard. They learn to express themselves. They learn to take some responsibility for themselves. They learn to make decisions—good or bad. We let them know it’s OK to make decisions. They can learn to trust themselves and how to accept themselves, no matter what. Even if things don’t work out.
A lot of the kids have struggles with emotional regulation. We help them learn how to have more self-control. We set limits. If they’re doing things that are dangerous or breaking things, we say, “In here, you don’t get to break the toys.” But we don’t shame them. We say, “If you can’t play responsibly with the toys, you can’t play with that toy.”
How do you incorporate parents into Play Therapy?
From the beginning we meet with parents—without the children for initial intake. After every four to five sessions, we have a parent session. We’re constantly meeting with families. Every month we want to update them on treatment goals we’ve established, progress, and what’s working. We ask what’s happening at home. We find out what’s happening at school.
We incorporate Theraplay with parents. If kids have attachment issues and parents aren’t as connected, with Theraplay, parents can observe us interacting with children to teach them how to play with their kids and be more attuned. We have child-parent relationship therapy where we work with parents to teach them how to set up a playroom at home and reflect with their kids the way we do at the center.
Parent workshops provide an opportunity to work on learning skills and Play Therapy.
If some parents need therapy for themselves or need parent coaching, we do that individually.
How does the Heart Leaf Center support victims of interpersonal violence?
Sometimes the families we serve are separated. We still try to incorporate both parents into the process—if it’s safe. Even if they have to be separate during the parent sessions. As for the Play Therapy aspect, we have a lot of kids who have experienced some type of trauma. The process doesn’t change because a family might have been impacted by violence.
What’s something unique about the center?
We do a lot of training. We focus on training interns to go out into the field. We value them and really invest in them. That’s a big part of Heart Leaf. They’re supervised by licensed professional counselors and licensed professional social workers. We do lots of training to support them in their clinical work.
Heart Leaf collaborates with schools. How does that work?
During the pandemic, I was more concerned about what happens after covid. We talked with school social workers and started seeing the depth of how tough things were in the schools, how the kids were struggling so much. We saw significant need there. We collaborate with the schools. And we knew in many schools, families don’t have accessibility to come into the clinic. We worked hard to get into schools. We still operate the same way—but the kids are seen inside the schools instead of them coming to the center. We are working to serve kids in Fairfax City. We’re hoping through our partnership with Fairfax County Public Schools, we will get into more schools.
Get more information about the Heart Leaf Center at their open house Friday, Mar. 28, 2025, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
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