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Saturday 11:30 - 13:00

D1 Guest Speakers: Sally Aldridge , Michael Guthrie & Stuart Griffiths

Towards a regulated profession

This session will provide updated information about the regulation of the profession. In particular the following areas will be discussed:

• the recommendations for the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy
• the timetable for regulation
• the process for regulation.

There will be ample opportunities to ask any questions you may have with regards to any aspect of regulation.

D2 Guest Speaker: Clare Symons

Safeguarding clients, improving practice: what practitioners can learn from research into complaints and malpractice.

Complaints in counselling and psychotherapy are a sensitive area and uncomfortable to think about. It can be tempting to think that complaints are made only against maverick therapists whose practice is clearly harmful or malicious. As practitioners we may prefer not to consider the possibility of a complaint being made against us by one of our clients. But research into complaints and misconduct tells us a lot about what can go wrong in therapy, presenting the opportunity for all counsellors to learn from the experiences of clients. This seminar will draw on recent research to highlight the ways in which any therapist might encounter difficulties in practice which could ultimately lead to a client's complaint. Discussion will consider how these findings can be applied to practice.

D3 Workshop: Sue Sutcliffe & Kay Dowd

How Family Systems play out in the Group Setting 

The goals of the workshop are to:

• give a greater understanding of transference, counter-transference, projective identification and scripts within the group environment;
• identify roles within the family and the group setting
• demonstrate the reparative power of the group to heal primary wounds and allow for change.

This workshop will show how the group replicates these family dynamics and how it has the power to repair unresolved issues which stem from the past. The group allows for the possibility of experimentation in a safe environment, where assumptions and negative projections can be challenged. It can also offer a unique forum for support which is freed from the personal agendas that infuse the family unit.
This workshop would be most appropriate for therapists who are already involved in group work or those who would like to explore group and family dynamics further.

D4 Workshop: John Eatock & Chris Jenkins

Spirituality in Ethical Practice - does it matter? 

The aim of this workshop is to explore the necessity of acknowledging a client's spirituality and the possible consequences in counselling practice.
By the end of the workshop we will have:

• Explored what it is that we mean by ‘spirituality'
• Heard examples of times when spirituality has and has not been acknowledged
• Considered together the consequences for counselling practice and for the Ethical Framework
• Possibly come to a consensus and recommendations.

D5 Workshop: Dr Andrew Reeves

Tight Ropes and Safety Nets: Counselling Suicidal Clients 

Working with suicide potential can challenge any counsellor or psychotherapist, regardless of theoretical orientation or level of experience. Knowing how best to respond to suicide risk, or how to help clients explore their suicidal thoughts, demands clear ethical thinking and personal and professional integrity. Counsellors and psychotherapists often talk of having received little dedicated training to help them in this work, and consequently sometimes face these challenges with little formal or informal learning experiences to draw on. During my doctorial research I developed and piloted a one-day training workshop to help counsellors and psychotherapists integrate suicide risk assessment skills into their therapeutic work. This has now been delivered to in excess of 2000 counsellors nationally. This workshop will help counsellors consider what factors are important when working with suicide risk. Making use of a new DVD training tool, Tight Ropes and Safety Nets: Counselling Suicidal Clients (produced in conjunction with the University of Leicester), participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own work, and their own responses to working with the challenge of suicide.

D6 Seminar: Louise Robinson & Heather Hurford

Making the case for service provision (NHS funded) 

This interactive 90-minute workshop aims to help equip delegates to engage with NHS decision-makers and influence the shape of local provision in psychological therapies.
The main objectives for the workshop are to:

• communicate a summary of key issues for service providers in NHS commissioning and funding of psychological therapy services
• enable discussion and knowledge exchange around these key issues
• explore effective ways of working with NHS decision-makers in the provision and funding of psychological therapy services.

Some of the key themes that we anticipate will be the focus of discussion include:

• balancing demands of national policy and local needs
• engaging with, and influencing, decision-makers
• demonstrating evidence base and outcomes.

This workshop will be of most relevance to members who are involved in, or who want to develop their understanding of, the provision of psychological therapies funded by the NHS. The workshop will be relevant to all types of service providers to the NHS, be that in-house NHS services in primary or secondary care, the voluntary sector, independent practitioners and/or private sector organisations.

Saturday 14:00 - 15:00

E1 Guest Speaker: Matthias Schwannauer

Interpersonal Psychotherapy: A pragmatic short term psychotherapy model

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (Klerman & Weissman et al, 1984) provides a pragmatic, time-limited and focused approach to the treatment of major depression. It is modest in its use of psychotherapy jargon and promotes attention to the relationship-based issues which are central to the experience of many individuals suffering from depressed and emotional distress. The treatment does not become entangled in questions of causation, acknowledging the capacity for depression to both precipitate and reflect interpersonal change and difficulty. Instead, it attends to difficulties arising in the daily experience of maintaining relationships and resolving difficulties while suffering an episode of major depression. The fundamental clinical task of IPT is to help individuals to learn to link mood with interpersonal contacts, and to recognise that, by appropriately addressing interpersonal situations, they may simultaneously improve both their relationships and depressive state.

IPT strategies reflect a bias of attention towards the social world of the individual, while the techniques employed are common to many forms of psychotherapy. IPT assumes a common experience among individuals with low mood and emotional distress, manifest in their social withdrawal, and declining expectations and performance across work, social and family domains as they are increasingly burdened by the emotional, cognitive and physical changes associated with a major depressive episode. IPT provides experienced therapists with a novel way of formulating and conducting therapy rather than attempting to teach the basics of a psychotherapeutic approach.
The session will introduce the conceptual and therapeutic framework of IPT and will outline its main applications. The session will further introduce the training framework for IPT in the UK.

E2 Guest Speaker: Clare Jones

Client attraction toolbox

Has the credit crunch hit your practice? Is finding and keeping clients for your established practice becoming more of a challenge? Or, are you a newly-qualified therapist trying to attract your first clients to your therapy practice? This workshop will give you simple tools to help you to attract a steady flow of new business to your practice whatever your situation. You'll leave the session armed with some great ideas around how to build your network of client prospects and market to them efficiently and effectively. You'll build your confidence around marketing and selling yourself and get an insight into how to tap into your clients' needs and give them precisely what they want whilst still remaining true to your professional ethics. Based on established techniques, this will be a fast-paced, dynamic session aimed at giving you practical tips to get you on the path to finding the ideal clients for your practice that you can act on immediately.

E3 Your Board of Governors

How does it work?

Have you thought about putting yourself forward for election to the Board? And would it help your thinking to know what happens at Board meetings and how its business is conducted? If so, why not come along and join in this simulated Board meeting to gain some insight into how the Board operates and get a flavour of the skills necessary to be a BACP Governor.

E4 Workshop: Greg Nolan

Creative thinking and practice in counselling and psychotherapy supervision: A workshop on the co-created space 

This workshop will show ways in which the supervisory frame can encourage reflection in clarifying and informing insights from the therapeutic relationship. An initial presentation and seminar discussion will consider ideas along with case study examples. Within an agreed contract of confidentiality, workshop participants will be expected to bring examples from their own clinical practice and, in small groups or pairs, creatively re-story the therapeutic process through materials, objects and images as symbol and metaphor.

In good consultative supervision there would be an expectation of mutuality, where each is likely to learn something new from a co-created relational space. As practising (or intending) supervisors of counselling and psychotherapy, we will hopefully experience (and add to) ways in which this work might be enhanced. I hope that each of us will learn something new, perhaps unexpected, in utilising our shared experiencing in re-framing perceptions and possible meanings from therapeutic encounters.

Keywords: creative space, intersubjectivity, mutuality, risk, supervision, trust.

E5 Seminar: Panel chaired by Val Potter

Panellists: Chris Jenkins , Peter Wilson , Anna Hamilton , Ann Munro

Voluntary Counsellors Today 

Many counsellors do unpaid work for all or part of their working week. From time to time BACP hears from Voluntary Counsellors who wish to make their views known on their working conditions and on how BACP, their professional association can be a source of the help and information they need. We invite you to attend this session to share your knowledge and experience with us and to have the opportunity to hear from, and engage with, professionals in the field.
If you are working as an unpaid counsellor, as a student on placement, a qualified counsellor gathering hours of experience for BACP Accreditation, or as a counsellor who chooses to do some or all of your work unpaid, this session is designed for you, whether you work in England or Scotland. A panel with varied experience in this area will talk about their experiences and there will be a chance for all participants to contribute to the information BACP needs in order to provide the best service possible to Voluntary Counsellors.

E6 Seminar: Tina Livingstone

"Otherwise Ordinary Clients; exemplary and destructive practices with trans-identified and trans-historied clients." 

Minorities clients do not simply present with minority issues; they are as likely to fall foul of life's complexities as anyone else. Thus whatever your approach, specialism, or interest, if you offer counselling to human beings you may encounter trans-identified and trans-historied clients (ie people who identify as transgendered or transsexual, or who have been through the gender reassignment process) and therefore find this seminar useful.
Similar to research undertaken with lesbian and gay clients (Liddle 1996), current research into counselling for everyday issues with transgendered clients indicates that certain therapists' practices relate to a higher risk of that therapy being found unhelpful.

Drawing on this research and counselling experience, the seminar aims to enable participants to gain a better understanding of:

• the trans-identified and trans-historied client population and
• which therapists' practices are experienced as particularly helpful and which experienced as unhelpful by trans-identified and trans-historied clients so as to inform and enrich therapeutic practice.
  
  

Saturday 15:10 - 16:10

F1 Guest Speakers: Christina Docchar & Professor Sue Wheeler

Supervision under the spotlight

Update on BACP Supervision initiatives, including developing standards for supervision training courses and Supervision Practice Research Network (SuPReNet)
This session is suitable for all and will take the form of a presentation with time for questions.

Setting Standards for Supervision Training:

This session will update members on both internal and external developments that are likely to have an impact on the future of supervision. The session will include information on the development of a core curriculum for counselling/psychotherapy supervision training courses.

SuPReNet:

In October 2008, Sue Wheeler and colleagues were successful in their bid to BACP for funds to set up a Supervision Research Network. The mission statement for the Network is to promote good quality supervision research, both nationally and internationally, with the aim of improving practice. The network was successfully launched at the BACP Research Conference in May 2009, and since then the SuPreNet organisers have been awarded a prestigious ESRC Seminar Series on supervision research. This session will update members on the progress of the network, with a view to more people becoming involved with the network and research into supervision.

F2 Guest Speaker: Professor John McLeod

A sustainable future for counselling

The aim of this session is to facilitate discussion around the future shape and development of counselling, as a distinct area of professional activity. In the past, there has been a complex relationship between counselling and psychotherapy, with some writers considering counselling and psychotherapy to be essentially the same thing, while others have viewed counselling as a junior partner to psychotherapy. The current social and regulatory environment provides a historic opportunity to re-define counselling, in a manner that emphasises its contribution to society. A proposal is made for a new vision of counselling based on contextualised and collaborative ways of working with those who are seeking help. Counselling would be positioned as a form of learning, rather than as a medical intervention, and would incorporate the work of practitioners whose counselling function is embedded in another professional role. The implications of this new vision of counselling for service development, workforce planning, training, and research are discussed.

F3 Guest Speaker: Dr Nuria Gene-Cos

Introduction to Lifespan Integration

This session will introduce delegates to the concept of Lifespan Integration (LI) therapy and will demonstrate how it is used in practice. As well as having an outline of the main LI protocol, delegates will have a chance to see a DVD of an LI therapist delivering the therapy, showing results pre and post treatment.

Lifespan Integration is a recently-developed psychological therapy based on well respected and validated research in the areas of neuropsychology, early development, and attachment. LI can be used for the treatment of psychological difficulties such as trauma, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, dissociative disorders and conditions underpinned by disruption in early attachments.

Lifespan Integration works on a deep neural level to change patterned responses and outmoded defensive strategies. Integral and unique to LI therapy is the incorporation of a timeline of memories and mental images. Repetitions of the timeline are used visually in such a way that the client watches a series of ‘movies' of his or her life. These repeated journeys through time (usually three to eight repetitions within a session) demonstrate to the client's body-mind how past experiences have continued to impact on behaviour and choices throughout the lifespan. Major shifts occur when the body understands that time has passed. After LI therapy, people find themselves spontaneously reacting to current stressors in more age appropriate ways. After several sessions of LI, clients have reported that they feel better about life, are more self-accepting, and are better able to enjoy their intimate relationships.

Peggy Pace, who devised this method, travels from the United States to Europe giving trainings. More information about this therapy, and the accompanying book can be found at www.Lifespanintegration.com and www.LI-UK.co.uk where details regarding future trainings, and can also be found.

For further details about Lifespan Integration please click on the link below.

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If you are interested in further training on this subject please click on the link below for more details.

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F4 Workshop: Terry Hanley

The challenge of online counselling: What place does it have within the counselling profession? 

Over the last two decades the Internet has played an ever increasing part in our everyday lives. It encroaches upon our personal spaces and becomes an inescapable tool in our working environments. Worryingly, for some, the counselling profession is unable to avoid developments into virtual arenas and counsellors are increasingly offering services in this medium. This workshop therefore aims to stop and examine the place that such practice has already obtained within the counselling profession and to consider where we may be heading next. More specifically, the development of online therapeutic practices will be considered and the motivations for such movements will be discussed. Additionally, the creative strategies that practitioners are presently using to engage with clients will be examined and evaluated in light of recent research. During the workshop, attendees will be asked to reflect upon their own perceptions of online counselling practice and to share any experiences (positive or negative) of undertaking such work that they may have had to date. It may also be comforting to know that attendees will not be asked to use a computer at any point during the session.

F5 Workshop: Steve Seaton & Joyce Wellings

What is counselling worth? 

Any counsellor working in the community today faces new professional demands alongside enjoyment of the personal satisfactions of our occupation. For example, more than ever we are confronted by:

• renewed and powerful challenges from adherents of the medical model to evidence the efficacy of established therapeutic processes;
• ever-increasing pressure to produce detailed outcome data (IAPT contracts can require form-filling after every session);
• the increasing difficulty of finding secure resourcing of our services at a time of economic recession
• (paradoxically) increasing demand for our limited service provision
• national regulation
• burdens on case administration which, in overtaxing our time and energy (a PCT contract received by a small neighbouring charity recently ran to 134 pages!) can actually threaten clinical effectiveness.

In such times, how can we efficiently evidence the value of a diverse range of talking therapies without distorting the actual processes on which they are based?
And how can we most clearly make the case for a plurality of approaches?
By what means might we demonstrate the efficacy of a range of interventions, including more sophisticated paradigms of therapeutic interaction in which the complex human meanings involved can be resistant to capture by psychometric measurement alone?
In response to these challenges, Steve, Joyce and their colleagues in Herts have developed a simple social cost benefit evaluation instrument (SESI). In their view, the system could be developed as a family of effective evaluation tools which could be used across a whole spectrum of psychotherapeutic and related fields of intervention. At present based on CORE, SESI produces an instant monetary value for the outcome of a counselling intervention.

F6 Seminar: Professor Robert Burden

Prevention or cure? Alternative potential emotional outcomes of being diagnosed dyslexic 

What are the contributing factors which determine the developing sense of identity in adolescent males classified as dyslexic? In this session, we will look at comparisons made between two groups of male adolescents, with one group diagnosed as dyslexic. We will explore key contributory factors to the boys' academic self concepts, their feelings of self esteem (poor and positive) and of learned helplessness. By examining key incidents, key people and emotional influences in their lives, we will identify factors that contribute to positive feelings of self worth and ultimate academic success. In an area which is bereft of research into the thoughts and feelings of people with dyslexia, this is an opportunity to discuss social and emotional factors which can lead to positive outcomes for these young men.