Wellbeing Education - Professional Training in Therapeutic Wellbeing Practice for Children and Young People
Professional Training in Humanistic and Integrative Therapeutic Counselling Across the Life Course
Introductory Foundation
Year One
Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling Skills for Adults and Children
LEVEL 4
Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling Skills for Adults and Children
This course introduces students to holistic approaches to the client in context, applied therapeutic thinking, creative and relational therapeutic counselling skills. Emphasising the importance of principles of professional practice, inter-disciplinary perspectives, ethics, key concepts and theories of human development, therapeutic values, principles and philosophy as well as creative methods for relational play in therapeutic counselling.
This course is delivered over twelve weekends, 24 days, over a period of one year.
There are eight journal entries, and four practical assessments included in the introductory and foundation year.
Course Content
Module 1: Holistic Approaches to the Client in Context
The first module sets the scene, introducing students to the fundamental principles of professional practice for working with clients, including codes of ethics and practice guidance. Placements are for the purpose of contextual familiarization. The broad curriculum content introduces a wide range of influences on practice including, holistic, integrative, relational, person-centered, pluralistic philosophy, human rights, early intervention, prevention and promotion in child and adult mental health and emotional wellbeing. This includes adverse childhood experiences, (ACEs), safeguarding, multi-disciplinary practice, and developmental perspectives. Students learn about policy frameworks, professional practice guidance, contracting, developing a working alliance, consent and confidentiality. This includes embedding context, diversity and equity in understanding of intersectionality, working with difference: age, gender, sexuality, race, culture, spirituality, religion, neurodiversity, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice.
Module 2: Applied Therapeutic Thinking
This module introduces students to a range of relevant key concepts and theories for understanding human development from the field of therapeutic counselling. This underlines key influences from the history of ideas from different therapeutic schools of thought, encouraging critical evaluation, reflection and dialogue. It promotes awareness of why people might seek help, de-stigmatising access to therapy and presenting issues. This includes exploration and reference to person-centred, psychodynamic, family, systemic and cognitive-behavioural approaches in a humanistic and integrative approach. Students are encouraged to follow their own lines of enquiry, researching and presenting key concepts from analytical psychology, transactional analysis, gestalt, attachment theory, trauma and adversity-informed approaches. Students are encouraged to research their lived experience, including experiential engagement with personal development in conjunction with their theoretical research and evaluation. This underlines the significance of cognitive, social and affective neuroscience in human development, mindfulness and the core conditions for trust and safety in developing bonds, tasks and goals in therapeutic relationships.
Creative and Relational Therapeutic Counselling Skills
This module introduces students to the value of creativity and the role of relational play in human development and human potential. It develops the necessary adult and child therapeutic counselling skills for working with a wide range of presenting issues across the life course. This includes working in directive and non-directive ways, to enable engagement, nurture, structure and challenge with a wide range of interactive media. This highlights therapeutic counselling skills including researching lived experience, paraphrasing, summarising, mirroring, empathic-attunement, managing beginnings and endings, as well as relational and developmental play principles. This embeds humanistic and integrative skills in practice, facilitating the voice of the client in person-centred and process-oriented practice. This provides opportunities for the five explorations of whole intelligence, theory, practice and evaluation of therapeutic counselling.
Safeguarding, Human Development and Wellbeing
This module explores knowledge and understanding of human development in context, researching the impact of adverse childhood experiences across the life course. This includes contextual safeguarding and the promotion of child and adult mental health and emotional wellbeing. This underlines the significance of early intervention, integrative, relational and systemic values in practice, through whole intelligence and whole solutions. This reflects on clients’ relational needs and the potential impacts of adversity on domains of development, including evaluating risk factors and protective factors. It highlights the importance of rights and trauma-informed perspectives, awareness of vulnerability, dependency needs and self-actualising tendencies. This underlines the primacy of subjective lived experience and phenomenological enquiry, highlighting wellbeing capacities, belonging, age-appropriate choice and autonomy in collaborative formulation for therapeutic aims and outcomes.
Outcomes for the Introductory Foundation Year
The Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling Skills for Adults and Children
On completion of the first year students are evaluated before commencing professional training and placements. Progression to year two is not automatic and students are required to demonstrate they have the ethical sensibilities, personal readiness and academic capacity to train as therapeutic counsellors.
Successful transition to year two requires students to have fully understood the principles of professional practice, engaged with therapeutic thinking, demonstrated therapeutic counselling skills, and committed to safeguarding policy in practice.
"Words cannot describe the huge transformational journey this course has instigated in me. My work has gone from strength to strength and I am now more convinced in and confident to apply the arts therapeutically in my practice."