Centre Team
Cathy Hartman
Trish Brodrick
Tayla Thorpe
Sarah Wyllie-Keates
Nikita Knowles
Trish Brodrick
Trish has over 24 years’ experience working with children on the autism spectrum both in South Africa and in the United Kingdom. After qualifying with a degree in Occupational Therapy from UCT in 1998, Trish travelled to the United Kingdom and commenced working with children with autism spectrum disorders. During this time, she completed her master’s degree in Autism at the University of Wales. Trish worked for five years in Bristol and London providing intervention to children with autism in their homes and schools. She gained experience working with a wide range of professionals and a variety of techniques and programmes. In 2005 she returned to South Africa, registered as a private practitioner, and founded the Centre for Play and Learning. Trish continues to strive to provide much needed services for children with autism and related disorders in South Africa.
Sarah Wyllie-Keates
Sarah moved from Zimbabwe to Cape Town in 2004, following her completion of a Post Graduate Certificate in Education at Rhodes University. She then travelled overseas, spending a year teaching English as a second language to Kindergarten and Primary School Children in Taiwan. On her return to Cape Town, she began offering communication and language tutoring for young learners in their home setting. It was through working with learners with a variety of social/communication and behaviour difficulties that Sarah was led to the Centre, where she ultimately found her passion. She eagerly joined the Centre in 2008 to work alongside a team of dedicated professionals who share a mutual desire to provide quality intervention for learners in a specialised setting and to work collaboratively with the learners’ best interests at heart. Now over 15 years on, Sarah supervises the learners’ one-on-one and small class programmes and offers on-going input to learner programmes when needed as they progress through the various Centre settings. She also runs the Centre’s in-house staff training and manages the Centre’s day-to-day running.
Tayla Thorpe
Tayla graduated with a BSc. in occupational therapy from UCT in 2017. She completed her community service year in Port Elizabeth at Dora Nginza where the majority of her caseload consisted of paediatric patients with varying diagnoses. She then went on to gain several years' experience in the field of geriatric occupational therapy. After this, Tayla returned to her passion of working in paediatrics and joined the Centre in 2022. She currently works as the Centre's full-time occupational therapist. As well as ensuring occupational therapy targets are integrated into the learners' programmes and within the classroom settings, she also completes individual sessions for those who have chosen to do individual occupational therapy. Tayla is currently in the process of sensory integration training through SAISI and will complete the training by 2025.
Cathy Hartman
Cathy graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Primary Education at Rhodes University and then furthered her teaching qualification with a Further Diploma in Remedial Education. Cathy taught at a range of schools in Johannesburg and further afield in the United Kingdom before embarking on her teaching career in Cape Town. She initially taught in mainstream school settings before moving into schooling environments for children who need specialised teaching. Since 2001 Cathy gained a wealth of experience working in various schools for learners with special needs becoming proficient in multi-grade teaching. The Centre welcomed Cathy as an integral member of our team in 2016 and she has since been running our Grade 1 to 3 classes.
Nikita Knowles
Nikita completed her Montessori Grade R Diploma in 2015. Following her Montessori Diploma, Nikita initially spent 4 years gaining experience in facilitating within various classroom settings and completing facilitator courses. It was here that she developed a real passion for the foundation phase of schooling, inspiring her to study education beyond Grade R, and leading her to complete her bachelor’s degree in Education with which she is currently busy. Nikita joined the Centre Team in 2019, taking on the running of the Pre-Grade R and Grade R classes. Nikita strives to establish strong foundations in her learners’ education in fun and dynamic ways, ensuring the classroom is always an exciting place to be. This provides an important platform from where learners can go on and tackle the Grade 1 curriculum. She is now also involved in the Grade 1 to 3 classes, where she assists with curriculum concept development.
Educators
Meagan Mienies
Robin Morta
Akhona Mdlulwa
Hayley Lerm
Tracey-Lee Dutlow
Zoë Lavita
Laylaa Moolla
Dominique Benson
Jenna Joshua
Educators
The Centre has a talented group of educators who come from a variety of tertiary education backgrounds, typically in the fields of education or psychology. They have been through rigorous training internally at the Centre and for their first two years of employment, continue to grow and learn during a two-year internship. Our educators form a vital part of the Centre Team and are involved in one-on-one intervention with the learners, as well as small group work.
Support staff
The upkeep of the Centre’s grounds is reliant on our hard-working support staff. The Centre’s cleaner, Thobeka Mguga, and our care-taker, Harry Kanyama, take great care to ensure that the Centre is clean and tidy and who naturally develop positive relationships with and display an invested interest towards all learners who come through the Centre doors.
Consultant therapists
The Centre offers a range of therapies in-house from our consultants. These include, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy and music therapy. The consultants play a vital role in ensuring holistic programmes.