Starting September 2006

One weekend a month and bi-monthly Wednesday Evening

Content & Schedule:
This course is for those who have completed a minimum of 150 hours of humanistic counselling training (e.g. person-centred or Gestalt approach) at what is now described as Level Three, such as our Certificate course or equivalent, and are already seeing clients or ready to do so. The course includes personal development work, counselling theory, skills development & practice, consideration of professional ethical issues & anti-oppressive practice, enquiry into individual and group processes and a counselling placement. These areas will be supported by project work and a residential weekend on 'working creatively'. Students are encouraged to identify and develop their own particular style of working. To enable all this to take place with proper support the training extends beyond two academic years.

The Humanistic approach holds the following values:

• to work at the client's pace and experience of themselves and their relationships.
• to work towards an authentic meeting in the therapy relationship.
• an expectation that people take responsibility for their own life choices.
• a support and honouring of the spiritual dimensions of experience.

We will use contemporary Gestalt therapy as a reference point to explore different aspects of the working relationship. Contemporary Gestalt is a relationship-based, integrative counselling model that gives more emphasis on pacing and appropriate levels of challenge than early traditional Gestalt approaches sometimes did. The Person-centred core conditions underpin our work, as does some psychodynamic thinking, as we explore different ways of understanding and working with the therapeutic relationship. We look at how we can integrate our different approaches and experiences while remaining clear and consistent in our work.

Accreditation:
The course is accredited by ABC (£80 approx. registration fee -exact amount to be confirmed) and run in conjunction with City College, both of whom will be monitoring the course. Participants will also enjoy the benefits of being City College students. Students will comfortably complete the 450hrs BACP current training requirement with this course.

Counselling Placement:
To include 100 hours supervised counselling practice. Students are responsible for finding their own placement, but we can offer help and guidance with this.

Trainers
All the course staff team bring many years of counselling, psychotherapy, supervision and training experience to the group.

Application:
Please complete the application form (available to download below) with details of what you feel you have taken from your training so far personally and professionally and why you want to continue. For internal applicants forward the form to Bob Smith. For external applicants please call 0121 429 1758 to arrange an interview and submit the application form before your interview date. Interviews will be with Bob Smith, who manages the advanced training programme.

Application Form
To Download an Application Form please click on one of the options below:

• Microsoft Word
• Plain Text
• Rich Text Format

Course Dates:
This course runs for 430 hours over two and a half academic years for one whole weekend every month, and a Wednesday evening approximately every other month. The first meeting will be on Wednesday evening, 20th September, the first full day will be the 21st October 2006.