Newsletter: June 2025
This months top news
It was great to catch-up with our Relational Play and Creative Therapy Young People students for their first quarterly tutorial. Reconnecting is really important when undertaking training, reducing the feelings of isolation while you continue to complete your studies.
We are delighted to share that we have designed and developed a new course! Relational Creative Therapy for Adults.
More information can be found at https://schoolofpact.com/courses/l6-certificate-relational-creative-therapy-for-adults/
Coming soon...
Once Upon a Trilogy ®
Three-day course:
Day one: Once Upon an Archetype
Day two: Once Upon a Metaphor
Day three: Once Upon an Anti-Hero
Within this three-day course we explore Archetypal Energy, Metaphor and Anti Heroes and the way they can present within our clients play. Have you ever wondered about the repetitive play of your clients? The same characters being used? The same themes coming up week after week? What processes are happening? How can you become involved? When should you join in or be a silent witness?
This course will enable you to gain a deeper understanding of how Archetypes, metaphor and Anti-heroes become powerful concepts within your client work. When you are the observer of your client play, watching a play narrative unfold this course will help you to consider these concepts to gain a deeper understanding of your client’s process and the transference which arises.
Dates: 22/06/2025, 28/06/2025, 19/07/2025
Time: 9.00 – 4.30pm
Venue: Online
Accredited by: CPD Standards Office
For more information about this dynamic course visit: https://schoolofpact.com/courses/the-once-upon-trilogy/
New Dates! Web Therapy: Supporting families in Crisis
Working with traumatised children and their families requires specialist training. Web therapy takes you through a system that will empower you to work with clients who have experienced complex trauma and parents and professionals who are caring for them.
For more information: https://schoolofpact.com/courses/web-therapy/
When: 12/07/2025 – 13/07/2025
Location: Online
Accredited by: CPD Standards Office
L6 Diploma – Relational Play and Creative Therapy, Children and Young People.
This innovative exciting programme will teach the fundamentals of play and creative clinical practice with children and young people 4-18 years old, up to the age of 25 years for young people who are Care Leavers or those who have Special Educational Needs.
Taught over 2 years, commencing:
06/09/2025 in Bedford
04/10/2025 in Bristol.
Accredited by: CpCAB
For more information about this dynamic course visit: https://schoolofpact.com/level-6-diploma/
One Small Step Forward into Your World of Private Practice
This course demystifies the complexities of setting up a business empowering you to successfully navigate each stage.
This course will cover the fundamentals of:
- Type of organisation to set up
- Business planning
- Marketing
- Sales
- Clinical requirements
- Policies
- Legal requirements
- Self-care
In addition, you will be able to take away templates of contracts and seven essential policies to utilise within your new practice.
Please note date change to 13/09/2025
Accredited by: CPD Standards Office
Coming to Bristol! L6 Certificate, Relational Play and Creative Therapy, Young People
Relational Play and Creative Therapy for Young People Qualification provides the essential theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to work ethically with an older age range.
This course will explore the legal requirements of working with an older age range of clients, including consent, risk assessing and safeguarding responsibilities. Full details of this qualification can be found at https://schoolofpact.com/courses/post-qualifying-relational-play-and-creative-therapy-for-young-people/
Accredited by CpCAB.
Dates: 25/10/2025 to 31/10/2025.
Quarterly tutorials: Dates and times will be agreed with the cohort
Location: In Person – Mercure Bristol North the Grange Hotel, Old Gloucester Road, Winterbourne, Bristol, BS36 1RP
New Dates Creative Therapeutic Life Story Work
This 8-day comprehensive programme offers a clear framework for professionals who want to develop their therapeutic skills offering Creative Therapeutic Life Story Work to children and young people who have been adopted or are in foster care, Kinship care, or under SGO’s.
Creative Therapeutic Life Story Work Qualification is Accredited by CpCAB.
Dates:
27/09/2025 – 28/09/2025
18/10/2025 – 19/10/2025
29/11/2025 – 30/11/2025
24/01/2026 – 25/01/2026
Quarterly tutorials: Dates and times will be agreed with the cohort
Location: Online
Accredited by CpCAB.
More details about this courses can be found at https://schoolofpact.com/courses/post-qualifying-creative-therapeutic-life-story-therapy/
Level 6 Certificate Relational Creative Arts Therapy for Adults
is an innovative, exciting programme, which will build on your previous experience to enable you to work therapeutically and creatively with adults. The course draws on thought provoking theories which will enable you to develop your skills and clinical understanding to work ethically with adults. Within this programme you will learn how to apply Client Centred, talking therapy and creative approaches to work with a broad spectrum of mental health conditions, including trauma, neurodiversity and attachment difficulties.
The approach underpinning the course is based on a humanistic client centred perspective. Among others, the work of Rogers, Jung, Freud, Siegal, Porges, Karpman, Bowlby will be explored.
Relational Creative Therapy model of training focuses on enabling adult clients to connect with the therapist so they are able to explore emotional, personal and relational difficulties, which may be getting in the way of their personal and professional potential. This course will focus on the development of the therapeutic alliance between the adult and therapist, a key component to talking therapy which will stimulate the creative processes that evolve as a result of this engagement. Engaging with creative arts media such as: sand trays, clay, art, movement, story or music allows adult clients to express thoughts and feelings, which might be difficult to articulate in words. These creative approaches can often support greater insight for our clients and develop their self-awareness. You will explore how to offer creative art media to adults so they can experience the power of metaphor and symbolism bypassing their inner critic and connecting more directly with their unconscious. You will experience a blend of experiential creative practice combined with theoretical learning to underpin your therapeutic counselling skills development. Relational Creative Arts Therapy holds the adult central to the entire therapeutic process.
Dates: 14/02/20256-21/02/2026, plus quarterly tutorials to be agreed with the cohort
Location: In Person Bedford
Cost: £1250.00 Payment options are available.
Something to ponder on...
Small t trauma
Some years ago, I was with some friends having some food and enjoying conversation and banter. Towards the end I started to realise that one of my friends was interrupting me regularly and turning the conversation towards what they thought was a more relevant conversation choice that, coincidentally, was about them. I started to feel offended. I stopped trying to be part of the conversation and silently fumed! That showed them! When we left, I was polite but cool and in my own passive aggressive way decided that I had made my point.
The funny thing is, I realised that all this was happening. I was aware that I was getting irritated, I was aware that I was shutting down, my face took on a pinched almost pouting look. I was aware that I was acting like a child.
So, what happened to me? I like to think of myself as a calm and rational person. This is a friend of over 40 years who has always been one of the kindest and most generous of people, but something happened. I stopped being a grown up!
It took a bit of time and some creative work to isolate where my feelings had sprung from.
I have always played sports because my dad played sports. He told stories of playing rugby for the Navy and epic football games with keen rivals and hitting a six off the last ball to win the cricket cup. All action, Roy of the Rovers stuff!
And so, I played rugby for the school team. We were not half bad and I scored a load of tries. I played cricket for the gas board and football for a team that were regularly promoted and won league titles. All this between the age of 11 and 30. At first, I would ask my dad if he would come and watch but there was always a very good reason why he couldn’t. By the time I was 15 I had given up asking. In all those years my dad came to watch me play twice. Once when I had been dropped for the one and only time to the second rugby team (why he chose that game I will never know) and the other time when my team played in the final of the 1st division football cup in the Cardiff League. I later found out from my mum that he only came because my mum wanted to watch as it was a sunny Wednesday evening in late April and only a short walk from where they lived.
As this unexplored part of my life emerged, I realised that I was holding an amount of resentment towards my dad. Feelings of not being good enough or important enough.
I want to pause here to get some facts straight.
- My dad was not a monster
- I barely thought about him not being there as my playing years passed so even at the time it was not a “live” issue
- My relationship with my dad was always very positive
- He was in so many ways a wonderful human being and a positive role model
- Between my playing serious sport and the time of the meal and conversation, 30 years had passed, and I had forgotten all about it.
But this is it. It can be the small things that come back to bite you. In his book: The Myth of Normal. Gabor Mate explores what he calls “Small t trauma”. He says: “Children… can be wounded in multiple ways: by bad things happening, yes, but also by good things not happening.” (Myth of normal P.31)
My childhood was about as good as you could get and yet there are always things that can jump out and cause that little child to become upset, sometimes in the most public and upsetting way.
I’m ready now for these feelings and when they do arise. I can recognise and acknowledge them. I can give the child that is me a quick cuddle and let him know that the grown-up is still in charge… most of the time!
Spotlight
We are looking for qualified clinical supervisors who are therapeutically qualified to work with children and young people. You will need to be a member of a registering body, hold a current Enhanced DBS, ICO and Liability Insurance. If you are interested in being added to our list of clinical supervisors, please let us know. Contact details are below.
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