This is a UEL validated course
Duration: Duration: Three years part time on Tuesdays.
When: Starts late September 2024
Costs: Please view all of our training courses and fees
Leading to UKCP Registration as an Integrative Child Psychotherapist
A deeply moving, very practical based course. Students will experience a whole host of ways to engage a child or young person in a truly meaningful dialogue for profound personal change. Over time this relationship can enable the child to widen the relational options with self or others, and fulfil their potential. Students will also benefit from learning from top international trainers and those eminent in the field of child psychotherapy and child mental health. Successful completion of the MA in Integrative Child Psychotherapy leads to the award of an MA in Integrative Child Psychotherapy by University of East London.
Theoretical components of the course:
As the outcome studies have shown, it is the relationship that heals, not adherence to method. Our primary concern therefore is one of treatment. This treatment is informed by Bowlby’s work on unmet attachment needs and borrows extensively from the work of Fairbairn, Winnicott, Balint, Kohut and Mitchell who all assert the primacy of relational needs.
The theoretical models concentrate on the work of key theoreticians and practitioners of this and the last century in the field of child psychotherapy. The course also prides itself in offering students the most up-to-date knowledge in child mental health. Key clinicians, researchers and theoreticians working at the cutting edge of child mental health are included in the syllabus.
Modules:
Module 1: Introduction to Clinical Skills and Fundamental Principles in Integrative Child Psychotherapy
Module 2: Psychotherapeutic Concepts for the Understanding of Babyhood and Childhood Experience
Module 3: Infant Observation Year 1
Module 4: Child Mental Health and Psychiatric Issues in Child Psychotherapy
Module 5: Advanced Clinical Skills Image, Metaphor and the Inner World in Integrative Child Psychotherapy
Module 6: Infant Observation Year 2
Module 7: Research & Dissertation
Module 8: Readiness to Practice
Clinical Placements and Supervision
Students on the course are provided with child therapy placements in London-based Primary Schools or supported in a placement in their home county. Our placement scheme has undergone rigorous research with Gulbenkian Funding. The research demonstrates that an Integrative Child Psychotherapy intervention has positive outcomes, effecting very marked change in troubled children.
Staffing
Staff are experts in their field. Most have published widely. As a group they have published papers in Therapy Today, The Psychotherapist: Journal of Child Psychotherapy, Infant Mental Health Journal, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Journal, Times Educational Supplement, Health Education Journal, Child Welfare, Psychotherapies with Families, Psychosomatic Disorders in Adolescence, Archives of Disease in Childhood, Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, British Gestalt Journal, British Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Anatomy, Psychological Medicine, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Psychiatry Today, Adoption and Fostering, Youth Counselling Bulletin, Group Analysis, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.
Course Outcomes were Formulated with Reference to:
- The CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) National Occupational Standards compiled by the National Service Framework Skills for Health
- Government objectives for Children's Services produced by the Department of Health and Social Services Inspectorate
- The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy Training Standards for Working with Children
- The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy Policies on Intercultural Issues, Equal Opportunities and Continuing Professional Development Policies
- BACP Training standards
Admissions Criteria
Candidates wishing to enter the Masters Degree course, in addition to the entry requirements for the Postgraduate Certificate in the Therapeutic Arts/Advanced Diploma in the Therapeutic and Educational Application of the Arts, must normally have the following:
- A Bachelor's degree from a British university or its equivalent, a qualification in a helping profession or in education, or a minimum of five years’ professional experience in therapy or a related field with the proven academic ability to work at Masters level standard
- The Diploma in The Therapeutic and Educational Application of the Arts from The Institute, or an equivalent qualification from an alternative, recognised psychotherapy training college (no exceptions)
- The completion of at least one year's in-depth personal psychotherapy
- At least one year’s experience of working with children in a responsible role
- Healthy free-child ego state from which to be fully present and play with a child
- Healthy adult ego state from which to be able to analyse and reflect with a child
- A highly developed capacity for warmth and empathy
- The capacity to fully and authentically amplify a child’s positive affect
Be able to demonstrate the following capacities and abilities:
- A sound grasp of fundamental therapy skills and fundamental psychotherapy theory
- The ability to work with competence, empathic attunement and depth with a full range of affect states
- To have an awareness of their own feelings and personal process
- The ability to support themselves when working with a client’s negative transference. This means that the candidate would not become defensive in the face of criticism, and would be able to maintain an empathic thinking stance
- The ability to maintain or quickly regain their thinking function when working with a client, as opposed to becoming overwhelmed by or confluent with a client's feelings
Students moving on to any of the Advanced Clinical Trainings from the Level 1 Post Graduate Certificate/Advanced Diploma, must complete a short course in counselling unless they have previous experience of at least 30 hours counselling skills training.
Admission Criteria for Direct Entry on to the Masters Degree in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy and Integrative Child Psychotherapy
- Bachelor's degree
- Qualification from a recognised psychotherapy training college (not counselling), at least 300 hours of training
- Accrued clinical psychotherapy hours under appropriate clinical supervision (log of clinical hours signed by a BACP accredited or UKCP reg supervisor)
- At least one year (minimum 40 sessions) of personal psychotherapy (not counselling)
- Highly developed capacity for human empathy
- Human warmth, capacity to play and to work fluently with images
- In addition, a written verbatim account of a twenty minute therapy session with a client will need to be submitted at an automatic second interview. Candidates will be required to talk through the verbatim account, focussing on theory and practice which informed their interventions. They will also be required to refer to their use of transference and countertransference
"My first year at The Institute has been an extraordinary and wonderful experience. Like Alice, I chose to follow the rabbit down the hole of learning. I went with unconditional curiosity into the unknown and discovered a Wonderland. Together with my peers, I have been given permission to play, learn and to be authentic. It has been inspirational, creative, challenging, confronting, exhausting and exhilarating. I have loved every moment. With this training, not only have I gained insight into my own sense of self but I have also expanded my love of the Arts. I look forward to completing the training and using this experience to work successfully with children." Caroline Logsdail, MA Integrative Child Psychotherapy Graduate
Changes to the curriculum, teaching staff, assignments on our courses
IATE reserves the right to make adjustments to the above due to unforeseen circumstances.
The quality of the training will not in any way be compromised in doing so.