Everything you need, right when you open it.
Enter your name and activation code, and your dashboard opens instantly. Launch a session, run an icebreaker, pull up a framework, or grab a note template. No passwords. No app to install.
Your practice, fully equipped.
Your practice requires intentional tools. Beyond the digital tray, our shop provides the physical resources to outfit your office; saving you time and energy.
Built to fit how you already work
Sandstories is designed to adapt to your theoretical approach, seamlessly supporting directive, non-directive, and systemic work. When hosting a session through our secure digital dashboard or curating your physical shelves with second-hand miniatures from the Sandstories Shop, you bring your clinical orientation; we provide the tools.
Grounded in professional scope
Sandstories is designed as a supplementary expressive tool for licensed practitioners and qualified school counselors. It is not a diagnostic instrument, a medical device, or a replacement for therapy. It doesn’t analyze trays, interpret symbols, generate diagnostic codes, or assess clients. The judgment, the licensure, and the training are all yours. Clinicians are responsible for operating within their individual scope of practice and adhering to their respective ethical guidelines.
Alignment with Ethical Standards
Bringing a digital tool into your practice raises real questions about distance counseling, data privacy, informed consent, and equitable access. Sandstories is built to help you meet the standards your licensure already holds you to.
American School Counselor Association (ASCA)
Sandstories supports the ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors, specifically Technology and Digital Citizenship (A.14) and Virtual/Distance School Counseling (A.15):
- Equitable access: It runs entirely in a browser—no installs, no special hardware—so students in low-income, rural, or remote districts aren't left out.
- Developmentally appropriate: An open-ended, expressive medium for younger students who can't yet put complex feelings into words.
- Progress monitoring: Securely export tray screenshots to track a student's growth and problem-solving over time, in step with ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors goals.
American Counseling Association (ACA) & NBCC
Sandstories aligns with the ACA Code of Ethics, Section H and the NBCC Policy for Distance Professional Services:
- Therapeutic boundaries: Each session uses its own access path. Clients never reach your dashboard, so you stay in full control of the clinical environment.
- Confidentiality: Sandstories stores zero Protected Health Information (PHI) on our servers, so client privacy stays exactly where it belongs—in your hands.
- Security: Sessions run over encrypted connections. No client data is retained after a session ends.
Association for Play Therapy (APT)
Sandtray is a form of play therapy, and APT's ethical guidelines apply when it's used as a clinical modality. Sandstories is built to support trained practice, not to shortcut it.
- Competency first: The tool provides the medium. The clinical judgment, pacing, and containment belong entirely to you.
- Documentation standards apply: APT's expectations for case notes, supervision, and consultation apply to digital sandtray sessions exactly as they do to in-person work.
Informed Consent
Both ASCA and ACA require informed consent before using technology-based tools with clients. For Sandstories, that means disclosing that sessions use a browser-based digital sandtray, explaining how tray screenshots are handled and exported, and noting that Sandstories stores zero PHI. A brief clause covering “use of digital expressive tools including browser-based sandtray” in your standard forms is typically sufficient.
Frequently asked clinical questions
The questions licensed practitioners actually bring to supervision — and to conversations with administrators, colleagues, and billing departments — before adding a new tool to their practice.
Is sandtray therapy evidence-based?
Yes. Sandtray draws on decades of validated play therapy literature, and multiple meta-analyses (Bratton et al., 2005; Lin & Bratton, 2015; Wiersma et al., 2022) report moderate-to-large effect sizes across trauma, anxiety, grief, and behavioral concerns. See our Research page for full citations.
Do I need sandtray training before using this?
Yes — and that’s worth saying plainly. The Association for Play Therapy (APT) requires documented training and supervised hours before practitioners use play therapy techniques clinically, and sandtray falls under that umbrella. Sandstories is designed to support trained practice, not shortcut it.
If you’re newer to sandtray, APT’s Registered Play Therapist (RPT) pathway and sandtray-specific trainings are the right starting point. If you’re already trained, the dashboard frameworks and protocols are built to complement and deepen the work you’re already doing.
Does it work for adults, or is it just for children?
It works across the lifespan. Many practitioners find it especially powerful with adults who tend to talk around their problems — because the work is non-verbal and projective, it moves past the verbal defenses adults rely on. Couples, veterans, hospice patients, and everyday outpatient clients can externalize and process material that would take much longer to reach through talk alone. On the younger end, the digital format works well with school-age children and older elementary students; very young children typically benefit more from hands-on sensory play with physical sand.
Can I use this for face-to-face sessions, or just telehealth?
Both. A digital tray removes geographic barriers in telehealth, but it’s just as useful in person — no sand to sanitize, nothing to haul between offices or sites, and setup takes seconds. Many practitioners use it as their primary tray even when a physical one is available.
Can I use this with groups?
Yes. You can share the session URL with multiple participants — each opens the tray with the same one-time code on their own device — or project a single tray on a screen for the group to interact with together. Group sandtray introduces additional facilitation considerations — pacing, turn-taking, and the relational dynamics of a shared tray — so clinical judgment and group facilitation training apply just as they would with any group expressive modality.
How does my client actually access a session?
You open your dashboard with your name and activation code, then launch a session. For telehealth, Sandstories generates a unique session URL containing a one-time 6-digit code — share that link with your client and they open directly into the tray. No download, no account, no login on their end. The code expires the moment you close the session and is never recycled, so there’s no way for a client to reopen a previous tray. In person, you can hand over a device or display the tray on a shared screen. Either way, the client never reaches your dashboard.
Is this HIPAA compliant? What about client data?
Sandstories is designed with HIPAA-aligned principles: sessions run over encrypted connections, and we store zero Protected Health Information (PHI) on our servers. No client names, identifiers, or session content are retained after a session ends.
That said, HIPAA compliance is ultimately a practice-level responsibility. Any screenshots you export become part of your clinical record and should be handled under your existing documentation and storage policies. If your setting requires a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), contact us — we’re happy to discuss what that looks like for your practice or organization.
How do I document a sandtray session?
Focus on process over interpretation. Most practitioners document what’s observable — what was built, what was named, what shifted — rather than assigning meaning to the tray. Export a secure screenshot alongside your notes and add it to your record. Because Sandstories stores zero PHI, your documentation stays entirely under your control and within your existing compliance workflow.
Are there contraindications for using sandtray?
Yes, and clinical judgment is paramount. While sandtray is an exceptionally flexible medium, clinical literature flags caution when working with active dissociation, recent psychotic episodes, or any crisis state where projective expressive work might destabilize a fragile client.
As with any expressive modality, your training in pacing and containment matters far more than the tool itself. Sandstories supports your clinical expertise — the decision to introduce a tray should always align with your client’s current stability and readiness.