MA Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy for Children, Adolescents and Families

This program provides clinical training in counseling and psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and their families. Those successfully completing the MA will be eligible to apply for individual practitioner registration with BACP as counselors/psychotherapists working with children, adolescents, and families. This three-year part-time postgraduate degree is designed to provide you with the skills, knowledge, and expertise necessary to have a positive impact on children and young peoples emotional and psychological health, as well as their overall development. The program is designed to support your development as a therapeutic practitioner able to work one-to-one with child and adolescent clients who present with diverse psychological issues in a variety of settings including both mainstream and special education, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) as well as youth and community support services. You will develop the skills necessary to be critically reflective about your own developing practice, along with an enquiring attitude to theory, research, and evidence-based practice in complex areas of therapeutic work with children, adolescents, and their families. The program is based around an integrative approach to therapeutic interventions with children and adolescents, incorporating aspects from three main therapeutic and theoretical traditions; humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral. We take a developmental approach to think about the client, as we explore the developing world of the infant and growing child from a variety of important perspectives, including that of attachment theory, psychoanalytic theory as well as neuro-biological and systemic lenses. You will be encouraged to explore psychological processes and experiences from these different perspectives and recognize the theoretical, personal, and cultural assumptions which influence your own thoughts and work as a practitioner.