The Berne Institute 

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Skills Practice Group

The Skills Practice Group is an advanced training group for clinical practice and development. It offers students the opportunity to focus on learning, applying and honing their psychotherapeutic skills.

The group is open to anyone who has completed a Foundation Course or the equivalent. It provides a place for live skills practice and, for those already seeing clients, an opportunity to apply the topics to their current case-load. Group membership is limited to 12. The group leader is Frances Townsend MSc(TA) CertCouns PTSTA(P).

This group meets for a whole day, once per month. Meetings are on Sundays 10.00am -5.00pm. Dates for 2008-09 are: 5/10, 2/11, 30/11, 4/1, 8/2, 8/3, 26/4, 24/5, 28/6, 26/7.

Membership is open to trainees from other training centres as well as to trainees at “The Berne”. (If you are currently in training at a centre other than “The Berne”, please get clearance from your trainer before applying to join the group. This is required by the ITA Professional Practices Guidelines.)

The course is menu-based, beginning with a session on contracting from which topics for the rest of the course will be compiled. To give an idea, previous sessions have included:
 

• Impasse resolution techniques
• Imagework and visualisation
• Creative play techniques
• Working developmentally with Child ego states
• Psychodrama techniques
• Working with Parent ego states
• Creative methods of script analysis
• Groupwork techniques.

For CTA credit hours the participants may count one supervision hour for each significant piece of live supervision of skills received, and the remaining hours may be logged as Advanced TA Training. For “Berne” students on the MSc / PGCD course, credit for the advanced training hours may be transferred to Core Disciplines 2 and 4.

Fee: the group membership fee for ten meetings is £900 (including £50 “Berne” membership fee). The booking deposit is £75. As with all our groups, you can pay the balance by instalments if you wish – for details, please contact Hicky Cheers, Finance Manager, c/o the “Berne” office.

Application: to apply for membership of the Skills Practice Group, or for further information, please contact The Course Registrar, The Berne Institute, Berne House, 29 Derby Road, Kegworth DE74 2EN. Tel./fax 01509 673649; email here >>.