Autistic children and others with social communication and emotional support needs can often be misunderstood. The Brick-by-Brick programme gives children a unique and playful learning opportunity to have positive social experiences, develop collaboration and make friends. We aim to reduce social isolation and mental health problems and build stronger societal acceptance of neurodiversity.
In Brick Club, children work together to build specific LEGO models or design & build their own freestyle LEGO creations in pairs or small teams. As they build they collaborate, communicate, negotiate and problem-solve, developing friendships and creating social opportunities along the way. All children are encouraged to interact in ways that work for them so everyone understands each other. For example, if children are building a LEGO model following the instructions, one child can be the Engineer and has the instructions, one child is the parts supplier and finds the right pieces, and one child is the builder and puts the pieces together. Children work together, taking it in turns to play the different roles until the model is complete. Playful and skilled adult facilitation is crucial to the success of the Brick-by-Brick programme so we focus on training professionals. It is important that Brick Clubs are child-led, building on shared interests and common goals.
Play Included C.I.C. was founded in 2018 in the UK, training health and education professionals in the Brick-by-Brick programme. Since then, interest has grown enormously. Our online course has now been accessed over 5500 times in over 30 countries. We have training partners in the US, New Zealand, Mexico, Hong Kong and Australia. If each facilitator works with 30 children a year, that means we have reached 830,000 children since we began. In March 2021 we launched our fantastic partnership with The LEGO Foundation. With their expertise and support, we updated our training and have launched a comprehensive digital learning and resources platform so our training can be accessed in 50 countries.
The programme is also spreading far wider than autism. Particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, children's social development, communication skills and emotional wellbeing have been dramatically affected. More and more children need playful approaches to developing these skills, and Brick Clubs have been a great solution. Whilst we don't have research evidence, our impact data shows Brick Clubs are being implemented with a really wide range of children, ranging from autism, ADHD, anxiety, speech and language needs, isolation, attachment, learning difficulties and children with no additional needs, as of course every child benefits from meaningful, playful social opportunities.
We have been updating our resources and platform to increase more activity guides, and we have added to our parent-facing resources to support parents as well as professionals, with our free 'play at home' activity guides.
Our training is now available for health, education and care professionals and can be booked at https://playincluded.com/training. Free activities for parents and carers to use at home can be accessed here: https://playincluded.com/for-parents-and-carers/for-home/, and have free whole-class activities for schools to support social & emotional wellbeing for all children called Building Friendships accessed here: https://playincluded.com/for-professionals/for-schools/.
