Continuing Professional Development

Continuing Professional Development: Short Courses

Specialist Counselling Training

The following is a list of our current range of short courses.

Introduction

This programme of short courses has been designed to contribute to the continuous professional development needs of practitioners. All of the courses are open to past and current students from our counselling training programme, as well as appropriately qualified practitioners who work in the field of mental health. All participants completing workshops will be issued with a Certificate of Attendance.

Please note: if you are interested in attending a course that you don't see listed here, please let us know and we will be happy to discuss incuding it in our range.

Eating Disorders in Clinical Practice
This weekend workshop focuses on all areas of eating problems including compulsive and binge eating. It explores the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes involved, and pays attention to the particular complexities of working with clients presenting with these specific issues.The training will consider how family circumstances, together with social and cultural values, combine in the development and maintenance of this condition. The workshop uses didactic teaching, case vignettes and role-play, and offers a range of appropriate therapeutic responses for
clinical practice.

Times

Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.

Working with Survivors of Abuse
These intensive skills based weekend trainings encourage and enhance therapeutic competence in working with adult survivors of abuse. During the weekends, participants will develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of childhood trauma and how this impacts on adult functioning.
Students can opt to undertake one or more of the weekends from the Certificate in Working with Survivors of Abuse programme. These include:
• Understanding Abuse and Healing Tasks
• Rage and Anger
• Understanding the Abuser
• Intimacy and Sexuality

Dates and Times
Four weekends over the year (Saturday and Sunday) 10:00 - 17:00.

Short-Term Counselling
Short-term counselling has increased in demand as a result of pressure from doctors, employers (EAP) and increasingly, clients themselves. This skills-based weekend will look at the advantages and disadvantages of working in this mode, and particularly addresses the application of psychodynamic concepts in facilitating change. The workshop will use didactic teaching, role-play and small and large group discussion.

Times
Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.

Working with Survivors of Abuse
These intensive skills based weekend trainings encourage and enhance therapeutic competence in working with adult survivors of abuse. During the weekends, participants will develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of childhood trauma and how this impacts on adult functioning.
Students can opt to undertake one or more of the weekends from the Certificate in Working with Survivors of Abuse programme. These include:
• Understanding Abuse and Healing Tasks
• Rage and Anger
• Understanding the Abuser
• Intimacy and Sexuality

Times
Four weekends over the year (Saturday and Sunday) 10:00 - 17:00.

Short-Term Counselling
Short-term counselling has increased in demand as a result of pressure from doctors, employers (EAP) and increasingly, clients themselves. This skills-based weekend will look at the advantages and disadvantages of working in this mode, and particularly addresses the application of psychodynamic concepts in facilitating change. The workshop will use didactic teaching, role-play and small and large group discussion.

Times

Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.

Gestalt Weekend Training
Gestalt is an approach that requires active and genuine participation in the
therapeutic encounter by both therapist and client. ‘Being and doing' is preferred to using set techniques or strategies. By its very nature it is energetic, creative and experimental. The aim of this weekend is for the participant to identify their individual style, explore their creativity and experimentation skills and therefore have the opportunity to integrate a Gestalt approach to working with clients. This weekend will include focus on central concepts such as:
• Working in the ‘Here and Now'
• Phenomenology and the therapeutic relationship
• Presence, creativity and the use of the senses
• Noticing client's interruptions to the cycle of awareness
• Experimentation
This will be done through a mixture of didactic teaching and active experiential learning.

Times

Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.

Couples Counselling and Sex Therapy
This weekend training is an introduction to working with couples, particularly around sexual issues. It is a skills based weekend and will focus on: couple assessment, transferential issues and the couple dynamic, directive and non-directive practice, communication, sexual issues, psychosexual counselling and ethical complexity. The workshop will be both didactic and practice focussed, and will involve working with an actor couple. Models of therapy will encompass humanistic integrative approaches and cognitive behavioural techniques.

Times

Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.

Transactional Analysis - Theory and Practice
This theory and practice weekend is for participants who have a working knowledge of Transactional Analysis theory, and want to consolidate their knowledge in their practice with individual clients. The two-day workshop offers opportunities to:
• revisit some TA theory,
• play with theoretical concepts and get a feel for applying them
• examine your existing ways of working.

The workshop will focus on:

• establishing a therapeutic alliance,
• contracting,
• ego states,
• transactional analysis proper
• script analysis.

Case examples will be used to illustrate the practice of TA, and participants are invited to bring their own examples of client work. There will be a combination of small group exercises, demonstration pieces and large group discussion.

Times
Saturday - Sunday 10:00-17:00 hrs.