Episode 3: Playful partnerships - integrating toy libraries into clinical practice
- 6 days ago
- 9 min read
How can toy libraries become part of the support professionals provide to families?
In Episode 3 of The Toy Library Effect, host Penny Johnston is joined by occupational therapists Cassie Doyle and Brian Hoare, physiotherapist Nicole Pates, speech pathologist Alice Crook and play therapist Dr Kate Renshaw to explore how toy libraries can help extend therapy beyond the clinic and into everyday family life.
Listen now:
In this episode
Why meaningful change often happens beyond the therapy appointment
How toy libraries can help families continue therapy-informed play at home
What it means to ‘play with purpose’ and support individual developmental goals
How choosing and positioning toys can support communication, movement and learning
Opportunities for stronger partnerships between allied health professionals and toy libraries
Episode overview
Play offers families opportunities to build on developmental goals as part of everyday life, and toy libraries can give them access to a wide range of toys and resources to support this at home. This episode explores how toy libraries can complement the work of allied health professionals and help families continue therapy-informed play between appointments.
Occupational therapists Cassie Doyle and Brian Hoare, physiotherapist Nicole Pates, speech pathologist Alice Crook and play therapist Dr Kate Renshaw share practical insights into playing with purpose, choosing toys based on a child’s goals and interests, and helping families create opportunities for communication, movement, learning and development.
The episode also explores the potential for stronger partnerships between allied health professionals and toy libraries, from introducing families to their local service and getting to know toy collections, to collaborating on resources, play opportunities and collections that better support children and families.
Meet our guests
Penny Johnston
Podcast host
Penny Johnston is an experienced Australian broadcaster and podcast host, best known for her work with ABC Radio and the Babytalk podcast. In The Toy Library Effect, she speaks with families, toy library leaders and child development professionals about the power of play, connection and community.
Cassie Doyle
Occupational Therapist
Cassie Doyle is an occupational therapist who works with children and families, with a focus on supporting meaningful participation in everyday life. She shares how toy libraries can help families build on therapy goals at home while reducing the pressure to continually purchase new toys and resources.
Dr Kate Renshaw
Play & Filial Therapy, APPTA RPT-S™ (Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor™)
Dr Kate Renshaw is a registered play therapist and supervisor who brings a play therapy perspective to supporting children and families. She discusses the importance of choice, child-directed goals and making toy library experiences manageable and empowering for families.
Nicole Pates
Paediatric Physiotherapist, Nicole Kids Physio and Western Kids Health
Nicole Pates is a paediatric physiotherapist with more than 15 years of experience and the founder of Western Kids Health. She is also the host of the Baby Banter Podcast and National Paediatric Chair for the Australian Physiotherapy Association (2023–2026), with a particular interest in helping families understand children’s development, movement and milestones through practical, purposeful play.
Alice Crook
Speech Pathologist and director at Ocean Grove Speech Pathology
Alice Crook is a speech pathologist at Ocean Grove Speech Pathology who brings both professional and personal experience of toy libraries to the conversation. She explores how borrowing toys can support developmental goals, reduce financial pressure and help families find resources suited to their child.
Dr Brian Hoare
Paediatric Occupational Therapist, CPTherapy and Monash Children's Hospital
Brian Hoare is a senior paediatric occupational therapist at Monash Children’s Hospital with extensive clinical and research experience supporting children with cerebral palsy. He specialises in play-based approaches that support children’s movement and participation and is Managing Director of CPteaching and CPtoys.
Transcript
Episode 3: Playful partnerships - integrating toy libraries into clinical practice
Welcome to the Toy Library Effect podcast, brought to you by Toy Libraries Australia. My name is Penny Johnston, and I am your host for this series of five episodes. In this series, we're exploring how toy libraries support children's development, strengthen communities, and work alongside families and professionals to make play more accessible.
More than just shelves of toys, modern toy libraries are community hubs that give families access to high quality, developmentally appropriate materials without the financial pressure of constantly buying new items. For allied health professionals, they can be a powerful way to extend therapy beyond the clinic walls, helping families embed therapy strategies into their everyday life.
In this episode, we'll explore how clinicians are using toy libraries to support therapy goals, how families can borrow with purpose, and why stronger partnerships between toy libraries and clinicians can create better outcomes for children and families. When clinicians only see a child for an hour every week or fortnight, much of the real learning happens at home. Occupational therapist Cassie Doyle says that is where toy libraries can make a real difference.
“As a clinician, we want to look at what families are doing in their real lives. I see children maybe once a fortnight, give or take, and I hope that in that hour a fortnight it's helpful and we're supporting goals and strategies, but that's not where change happens. Change happens at home in real life, where the child is with the most important people in their lives, and I don't want to fill families houses with toys that their child might only need or play with for a really short period of time. Like, who has the space for that? Who's got the funds for that? And I think that's where toy libraries can be a really important part of that puzzle.”
Physiotherapist, Nicole Pates also sees toy libraries as helping families continue therapy between appointments.
“A lot of the time when we're working with families and their little ones, we're only working for an hour in the clinic every week or every fortnight, so it's a parent going home and working through play to build those skills with their little one. And so for me, the toy library is just an extension of that therapy room in the home. And we can think about different toys that we might recommend for a specific goal at a point in time and know that the parents are not going to have to just continue to invest money.”
Speech pathologist, Alice Crook has experienced those benefits not only professionally, but as a parent herself.
“Toy libraries are a great way to reduce and lighten that financial strain. So, when we finished up our membership with our toy library and we were members for many years. Our membership showed that we'd saved over $7,000 from borrowing toys through the toy library. And you think, wow, that's significant. When my kids were little and they were crawling and then learning to walk, we borrowed lots of baby walkers and they were great from the toy library. They were sturdy, they were high quality, but we really only needed them for a short period of time. Once my children became confident with walking, they didn't want those walkers anymore. So, they were a great toy to have and to borrow. But then nice to be able to give back and hand them on so another family could use them.”
Many clinicians already discuss toys with families during therapy. The opportunity is often helping families discover that a toy library exists and showing them how it can support their goals.
“I think a lot of that is timing. When families are coming to therapy, then it's not always the day all the time to talk about a new thing. But I'm often talking about toys in therapy because we're using them. So, it might start with using something in a session and I say, do you have anything like this at home you could use? And if they don't, that might be an opportunity to talk about. Did you know the toy library exists?”
Cassie says clinicians themselves can sometimes overlook toy libraries as a professional resource.
Play therapist, Doctor Kate Renshaw encourages families to approach toy libraries in a way that feels manageable rather than overwhelming.
“For the most successful entry into the world of toy libraries, I would probably recommend a parent doing a bit of a reconnaissance mission, because if we don't have the kids in tow, often we can find the best parking or find the transport links that are going to work the best. We can set up to be successful. When and if we take the children and we can sign up, have those adult conversations. Setting yourself up for success in that initial point can maybe feel like then it's less overwhelming, and you can have some of the reconnaissance type of observational things or conversations that then make you feel like want to go back.”
One of the most powerful concepts clinicians discussed was the idea of playing with purpose. Occupational therapist Brian Hoare works with children who have cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions.
“What is playing with purpose? Well, it's not just play for the sake of play. What we do is understand firstly, the child and family's goals. What are they? Their concerns for their child. Then we as therapists use our knowledge. We've got some great tools, play based assessments that allow us to look at and analyse their sort of task performance, if you want to call it that or their play skills. Once we've got that information, we can then go, well, how can we support them in learning how to do that action? And that's where the play comes in. So, then we find not just any toy, we find toys that provoke. So, it's a big toy, use two hands. Small toy, you probably use a pincer grip. So, what we try and do is look at toys in a really analytical way. And would they provoke, naturally, this goal related action upon it. And then what we do is use those toys, support families in finding those toys, but then coach them on the strategies.”
Nicole says that intentional toy selection often starts with a few simple questions.
“I talk to families about three things. One is what is your little one doing now? right now, developmentally? And then two as a physio, I'll be thinking, where is that toy positioned? Because I'm wanting to encourage movement and that will be different for a speech and different for an OT, what they will think about. But as a physio, where is that toy positioned, because that changes things. If you keep all the toys on the floor, there's no need to get up to move towards the toys And third, what is the parent role in play? So sometimes it's modelling or shaking the rattle, showing their baby or their child that something moves or it does something. So, you know, it might be modelling, narrating, taking turns and almost helping that parent help the child or the baby discover the toy and delight in the toy.”
For Alice, one of the strengths of toy libraries is that they make those goals easier for families to understand and apply.
“Sometimes toy libraries will categorise toys around things like developmental stage or particular goals, and that takes that mental load out of selecting toys for families. If we go into a shop, things are grouped by brand, and they don't necessarily show us what we can do with the toy or how we might be able to use the toy. And so that's the beauty of the toy libraries, the goals are already embedded into the toys.”
Kate says toy libraries can support both therapist-directed goals and goals that emerge from children's own interests.
“If they've got goals that, say, an occupational therapist has prescribed, or if they've got goals that maybe is more child directed, then I think toy libraries could do both. If there's a little bit of choice and empowerment for children, if they're part of the experience, if they're going to the toy library, so maybe being able to look at all the different options and go, oh, there's maybe two or three things that might fit what the occupational therapist has asked us to choose, and then the child might get to choose.”
Alice also sees toy libraries as an important community connection point.
“I do like to talk about the benefits of toy library membership to families that I work with. I think membership can reduce a lot of the pressures on families. So financial pressures, pressure to have lots of stuff, but also to I see toy library membership is a really nice way to participate in your local community.”
The final message from our guests was simple: clinicians and libraries have much more potential to work together.
“I would really encourage therapists to head down to their local library and like actually go in, walk in, meet the people, introduce yourself, have a chat with the volleys, and get to know their toy collection. Sometimes you could even do a session at the toy library with the family to build their confidence in choosing toys in the long term. But looking ahead, I'd really love to see formal partnerships and imagine if every paediatric allied health clinic had a relationship with their local toy library, we could be co-designing collections and running play sessions and sharing resources. The community impact would be huge.”
“Toy library workers, whether they're volunteers or they're employed staff, they're really knowledgeable as well. And families can go to them and say, oh, look, we use this in therapy with our speech pathologist or OT, and I'd love to do something similar at home. And I think if the toy library doesn't have the exact same toy, they'll have something very, very similar.”
“I really hope that clinicians walk away from listening to these episodes, feeling or seeing that toy libraries are a real clinical and community resource, not just an optional extra. So, they reduce the financial pressure, they increase access, they build family confidence, and they like they give the opportunity for families to try and to give different toys a go, and if it doesn't work out, that's okay. We just return it.”
Toy libraries offer clinicians practical, affordable and community driven ways to enhance therapy. They reduce the financial pressure on families, increase access to quality resources, and help embed therapy strategies into everyday life. Most importantly, they remind us that meaningful learning happens in everyday moments and that when clinicians, families, and toy libraries work together, children benefit.
To find your nearest toy library, visit the Toy Libraries Australia website.
This podcast series was made possible through funding from the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Aging.
Thanks for listening.
