Wellbeing Education - Professional Training in Therapeutic Wellbeing Practice for Children and Young People

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• This training is the legacy of Camila Batmanghelidjh. This was commissioned by her and emerged in the heart of London alongside diverse communities. This included many years of collective effort, endeavour, co-production, research and evaluation. This was Camila’s inspiration to enable quality and standards in a therapeutic training based on compassionate presence.

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• The course educates students in holistic, relational and developmental approaches to therapeutic counselling across the life course for adults, children, young people, families, organisations and communities. Embedded in autoethnographic research, informed by analytical psychology, diversity, equity, identity and contextual understanding of mental health.

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• The theory, philosophy and values are grounded in the humanistic and integrative therapeutic tradition, which includes awareness of physiological, cognitive, behavioural, affective, contextual and transpersonal dimensions in a person-centred and process-oriented approach to human potential. This includes Lucy Johnstone and the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTFM).

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• This draws from humanistic, person-centred traditions with the core conditions for enabling therapeutic counselling, formulated by Carl Rogers, including unconditional positive regard, congruence and empathy, as well as Leslie Greenberg's emotion-focused therapeutic practice.

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• The course has embedded within it The New Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy, including Mamood Ahmad’s Whole Solutions, The Anti-Discriminatory Focus (TADF) competencies framework, including World Views, Identity, Context, Knowledge, Embodiment and Time (WICKET)

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• Dan Hughes PACE model (playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy), as well as the research findings from Dan Siegel in Mindsight, the Whole Brainchild and Intra-connected, including Peter Slade's approach to child play and Garry Landreth's relational play therapy.

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• Virginia Axline’s play principles are fundamental to supporting agency in children's recovery, underlined and supported by Graham Music’s biopsychosocial approach to nurturing children. Margaret Lowenfeld's work at the Institute of Child Psychology, small world technique, which introduced sandplay therapy, which was further developed analytically by Dora Kalff.

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• Training is informed by Malcolm Parlett’s Future Sense, Whole Intelligence approach,  grounded in Gestalt theory and philosophy, including the five intelligences or explorations, including responding to the situation, interconnecting, self-recognising, embodiment and experimenting.

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• Linda Finlay's core values from phenomenology for therapists, relational-centred research values, ethics and principles inspired by Linda Finlay, including owning oneself, integrity, reflexivity, acceptance, agency, empathic inquiry, mutuality, openness, impact and humility.

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• Nadine Burke Harris' insights into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), building on contemporary research, highlight the need to address the context as much as the inner life of the individual, targeted interventions for preventative work and recovery from ‘toxic’ childhoods. 

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• Pluralistic perspectives, defined by Mick Cooper and Windy Dryden, which celebrate clients’ diversity, difference and uniqueness, openness to multiple sources of knowledge, strength-based and asset-based approaches and critical enquiry and perspectives on theory and practice.

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• Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecosystemic model, Judy Ryde and Peter Hawkins  ‘systemic turn ’, where subjective lived experience is part of the field. This links to the evolving climate psychology movement, eco-anxiety and climate trauma informed by the work of Judith Anderson, etc.

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• Creativity and self-expression are central to the approach, including listening to the inner life in dreams and active imagination, inspired by Carl Jung, highlighting the value of play, stories, metaphors, and image making in the process of self-discovery and orientation to the world.

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• Petruska Clarkson’s multiplicity of therapeutic relationships, including the working alliance, transference and countertransference, developmentally needed, person-to-person and transpersonal dimensions. Additionally, the representational relationship from Maria Gilbert and Vanya Orlans, who underlined one hundred of the key techniques from Integrative Therapy.

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•  Margot Sunderland's passion for reaching the emotional depths of human suffering is to find the meaning and value of each individual life through engagement with the arts. This includes in-depth integration of cognitive, social and affective neuroscience in human development.

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• Eugene Ellis' The Race Conversation and Transforming Race Conversations supports the approach to engaging with difficult conversations, increasing dialogue about painful and complex issues:  colonialism, discrimination, intergenerational trauma, moral injury and legacy burdens.

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• Irene Champernowne's arts-based therapeutic community in Devon, creative and relational approaches whose work was supported by Carl and Emma Jung, Antonia Wolff and Peter Helton Godwin Baynes, who was one of the founders of the Analytical Psychology Club, London, 1922.​

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• The Sesame approach to working with drama and movement in therapy, attending to the symbolic language of the psyche, listening to dreams, inspired by Marian Lindvist’s pioneering work combined with  Joseph Campbell's work on world mythology and the hero's journey.

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• Kirsten Neff's self-compassion, values, beliefs, spirituality, depth perspectives,  post-traumatic growth, and respect for the transcendent aspects of human experience.  This embraces all religions and secular perspectives in an ‘all faiths and none’ approach to therapeutic counselling.

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• James Hillman's image from ‘The Acorn Theory’. The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, placing the image of the acorn both at the centre and circumference of the training. Steven Hermann's approach to spiritual democracy is inspired by William James and the varieties of religious experience; the archetype of the shaman, dreams, and active imagination.​

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In addition to these major influences on the training, there are many more in the wellspring the course draws upon including multiple and diverse ideas from the field of practice including the old school classics like Freud, Erikson, Perls, Berne, Winnicott, Maslow, Klein, Seligman, Bowen, Bowlby, Aisworth, Main, Stern, Yalom, as well as contemporary influences like: Fernando, Cozzolino, Erskine, Music, Fonagy, Golding, Bomber, Kirkbride, Geldard, Booth, Oaklander, Fisher, Mate, Van der Kolk, Lapworth, Sills, Fish, Desmond, Landreth, Tudor, Schwartz, North, Menakem, Porges, Elliott, Greenberg and those who have contributed to humanistic and integrative research, Norcross, Hubble, Duncan, Miller, McLeod and other relevant influences.