Tavistock&PortmanNHSFoundationTrust和TavistockConsulting

Course overview

This internationally renowned course is a four-year NHS clinical training in child and adolescent psychotherapy. Upon completion, you will qualify as a child and adolescent psychotherapist with eligibility for membership of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP) which is the registering body for the profession. The course is validated by the University of Essex, leading to the award of Professional Doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (DPsych).

Course outline

Over four years, you will undertake taught components, clinical work placements and a research project, attending the Tavistock Centre for training events on Wednesdays each week. Please note that due to Covid restrictions teaching is currently taking place online via Zoom.

The course consists of the following elements:

• Individual supervision for clinical work
• Small group clinical supervision
• Clinical seminars: (assessments, beginnings, work with parents, endings, models of short term psychotherapy and brief consultation)
• Choice of specialist multidisciplinary workshops for example: adolescence, fostered and adopted children; early years and perinatal; trauma and early development; children who are violent, delinquent or act out sexually, eating disorders)
• Experiential group relations week in year three
• Theoretical lectures and reading seminars
• Research teaching: methods and skills,
• Support for research project development (proposal, ethics etc)
• Research workshops
• Research supervision
• Academic support
• Assessed academic work
• Individual tutorials
• Departmental and clinic events.

You will also undertake clinical work, under supervision, as a member of a clinical team and will:

• Work with long-term psychoanalytic cases
• Work with short term psychoanalytically based therapy offered across the age range
• Gain experience and training in assessments and brief-focused therapeutic work
• Gain experience with parents and parental couples of referred children
• Gain experience in generic child mental health work, including family work
• Develop clinical specialism(s).

Research Project

In the first year research methods and skills seminars you will be introduced to key research paradigms, to quantitative and qualitative health care research methodologies and to a range of research designs. You will then be supported to formulate a research question, usually linked to your clinical experience or your workplace and to develop your dissertation proposal for registration for a Professional Doctorate, to undertake the data collection and writing up of your findings.

You will be fully supported by a research supervisor, and will also attend research workshops with your peers. The annual cross-programme research week offers access to the wider research culture at the Tavistock and Portman.