By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Staff Writer

CHELSEA – Child’s Play Therapy Center in Chelsea held a ribbon cutting ceremony, Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. to celebrate the center’s opening back in March of this year.

Staff and owners were in attendance to see the official grand opening of the businesses third location, which also has centers in Hoover and Huntsville.

Co-Founder’s Deborah Boswell and Kerri Bailey started Child’s Play in the fall of 2007 with their Hoover location on Lorna Road.

Boswell, a long time speech pathologist with over 25 years of clinical experience, and Bailey, a certified occupational therapist with over 25 years of experience, started the center because each had their own business focusing on their specified field; but they decided to combine them so they could provide everything a child would need under one roof.

“Chelsea was just the perfect fit for our next location,” Bailey said. “We already had a lot of clients driving all the way up 280 from the Chelsea area to our Hoover location; so we just thought with it being such a growing area that it would be the perfect place for another location.”

Child’s Play offers, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy to children with any disability that keeps them from performing at school or home, and they see all ages of kids from newborn babies to teenagers.

The Chelsea Child’s Play Center has several brightly painted rooms, one for each individual therapy, as well as a room designated for infants.

Most rooms look like a typical room with a table, white board and toys in them, but the walls are very brightly painted with red, purple and yellow. They are meant to create a welcoming and compassionate environment, Bailey said.

One of the rooms had a note from a kid pinned to the white board that talked about how great his therapist was and how much fun he was having in therapy.

The room that sticks out from the rest nestled in the back left corner of the facility is the physical therapy room, which is substantial and looks like a gymnastics training room more than a therapy room.

Bailey said that each room is meant to create an environment that makes kids want to come and enjoy their time in therapy.

Child’s Play Therapy Center in Chelsea is open Monday-Thursday from 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. If you would like more information about the center you can visit childsplaytherapycenter.com or their office at  48 Chesser Crane Road.