SEPACTO - Database of Play Therapy Outcomes  

SEPACTO System for Evaluating Play and Creative Arts Therapy Outcomes  

The national UK database of play therapy practice based evidence using measured outcomes.  

PTUK Members are required to apply the principles of clinical governance (quality management) to their practice. This includes the use of quantifiable measures of changes in the client's psychological and emotional state during a programme of play therapy sessions. This data is sent to PTUK in an anonymised form for entry into the UK national database of outcomes - SEPACTO.  

There is no charge to PTUK Members for data entry nor for sets of comparative reports which will be produced as soon as the dataset reaches a sufficient number of records.  

The main objectives of SEPACTO are to:

• Provide quantified measures of the effectiveness of play and creative arts therapies.
  
• Show the impact of play therapy on particular conditions e.g. autism, attachment problems, behaviour, trauma etc.
  
• Enable therapists to improve their practice by comparing their methods and results with others.  
  

SEPACTO has been operational since April 2003 and is designed to record data from the Goodmans SDQ, which many play therapists use. However the system is flexible and will accommodate other measures such as the contribution that play therapy makes to achieving an organisation's objectives.