Faith Binman

Faith is a proud mother and special education teacher. In addition to her rich experience working with children who have special needs in a classroom environment, Faith also has had formative experience working with children who have had contact with law enforcement while assessing their needs for the courts. Throughout her experiences she noticed that there was something cruicial missing for many children but like many in the field, could not necessarily identify what this was. As she began working with free and junk play, Faith noticed that many children who struggled under the strict confines of hyper-structured environments thrived both emotionally and in terms of their creative output in these less structured environments. She became convinced that free, constructive play experiences were a crucial part of healthy child development and was validated to learn about and explore the mountain of research backing this fact. She created JunkPark in order to fill this gap for children and allow for more positive, constructive play experiences. This is her passion.

Dr. Thomas Farrington, PSYD, ABPP

Tom is a proud father and board certified clinical psychologist who has varied experience working with families and children in schools, community mental health, private practice, corrections and as a coach. He agreed with Faith's vision in regard to what was missing for an increasing number of children. Namely, opportunities to meaningfully interact with their environment while taking risks and doing the work of childhood - heartily playing. He noticed that much of the suffering he observed in his practice was related to children feeling stifled, helpless, and incompetent due to a lack of experience in taking risks and engaging in meaningful trial-and-error toward a goal they have made for themselves. The research is clear on this topic. Unstructured play in the right environment increases self-efficacy, creativity, and most importantly vitality!