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, born out of the heart of London and the endeavour of diverse communities, including many years of collective effort, co-production, research and evaluation. This is Camila’s inspiration to enable quality and standards in compassion-based therapeutic training.

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• This 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, this promotes understanding of equity, identity and context.

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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 is embedded in 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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• The work of Dan Hughes is also pivotal regarding playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy (PACE), as well as the research findings from Dan Siegel in Mindsight, the Whole Brainchild and Intra-connected.

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• Virginia Axline’s child-centred approach to play therapy and her classical play principles are fundamental to supporting the agency and autonomy of children in recovery, in a secure, reliable therapeutic relationship which is underlined and supported by Graham Music’s biopsychosocial approach to nurturing children.

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• Training is informed by Malcolm Parlett’s Whole Intelligence, and the five intelligences or explorations, including responding to the situation, interconnecting, self-recognising, embodiment and experimenting.

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• The underpinning core values are from relational research ethics, 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’s work is influential and the development of the work on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This builds on contemporary research, highlighting the need to address the context as much as the inner life of the individual, in targeted interventions for preventative work and recovery from ‘toxic’ childhoods. 

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• The course is informed by pluralistic perspectives, defined by Mick Cooper and Windy Dryden as including celebrating of clients’ diversity, difference and uniqueness, openness to multiple sources of knowledge, strength and asset-based approaches as well as including critical perspectives on theory and practice.

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• Ecosystemic understanding, from Urie Bronfenbrenner is fundamental, including what Judy Ryde and Peter Hawkins describe as the ‘systemic turn’ where the individual’s subjective lived experience is part of the field. This links to the climate psychology movement which continues to evolve and is curated by Judith Anderson. 

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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.

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

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• The approach has been influenced significantly by Margot Sunderland and her passion for reaching the emotional depths of human suffering, 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.

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

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• Analytical Psychology, inspired specifically by Irene Champernowne’s relational approach at Withymead, where she pioneered the first therapeutic community in the UK. This was grounded in the arts and creative process and was supported by both Carl and Emma Jung, Peter Helton Godwin Baynes and Antonia Wolff.

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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 Peter Slade’s Child Play, Carl Jung’s attitude to the unconscious and Joseph Campbell's research on world mythology.  

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• Spirituality and the transcendent aspects of the human condition, including the human psyche, recognising that at the heart of post traumatic growth, must be respect for the diversity of human values and beliefs, embracing all religions of the world, as well as secular perspectives in an ‘all faiths and none’ approach.

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• Finally, James Hillman links archetypal dimensions of human experience with developmental aspects of the training through the image of ‘the acorn theory’. This is from one of his many books, 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.

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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, Lowenfeld, Klein, Seligman, Bowen, Bowlby, Aisworth, Main, Stern, Yalom, as well as contemporary influences like: Fernando, Cozzolino, Erskine, Music, Fonagy, Golding, Bomber, Kirkbride, Geldard, Booth, 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.