You may want to be part of Catalyse promoting CAT in the North, working with others. If you’re not sure about all the areas of our work then take a look around our website. To find out more about the aims of Catalyse and our constitution click here .
The following says a little about how to connect, get involved and join Catalyse in its work.
How do people stay involved?
There are a variety of roles that people have with Catalyse. We have prepared some information on many of the roles involved with the Practitioner course and other workstreams which you can download below.
Catalyse-Practitioner-Course-Roles.pdfPeople have got into work with Catalyse in different ways and we recognise that there isn’t a clear path. We have open applications for some roles, including specialist roles such as project manager to make the training films. However, most people start gradually, usually making a contribution to the CAT Practitioner course, doing a case presentation, a Q&A session in year 1 or contributing to a teaching day due to specific expertise. Then the role might evolve from there, as a seminar facilitator, supervisor or marker.
For major roles in the course, specifically trainers and for core trainer roles, there would usually be increasing levels of involvement. We’d also like to be able to hear from people interested in any other Catalyse role. You may have an idea or a project relevant to one of the workstreams, e.g. developing Personal Reformulations in your workplace. You may want to offer a CPD day. Or you have a skill or talent that could be valuable for Catalyse, e.g. if you are an ex-accountant and can help with finances; if you are good at technology or other services.
Our ways of bringing people in aren’t static but we hope to be more transparent about the possible routes.
How do we do this currently?
By general encouragement and being open
We ‘generally encourage’ people to consider various roles. For example on the last day of CAT Practitioner training we encourage people to consider areas they are drawn to. At that stage and later through mailouts, we invite all graduates to consider roles such as seminar facilitator or training therapist.
We think this works relatively well for these roles but other roles are less open to this. For example, you may be less likely to say you’d offer a training day. Markers are more usually accredited supervisors or those who have started training as a supervisor. We would like to include people who are drawn to marking due to their experience, but are not yet supervisors.
Inviting you to make a specific contribution
We sometimes approach individuals and encourage them to become involved due to their area of work and developing CAT applications. This could be through presenting case material, being a co-trainer on a course training day, or running a CPD event.
As your use of CAT will develop after Practitioner training we might not know about that. If you think you have something to offer or would like to discuss this further, we’d welcome you getting in touch.
You approaching us
We recognise that it may be hard to put yourselves forward for a course role and even harder for some of the other Catalyse roles (CPD trainer, PR therapist). This may be the case even if we encourage you, as this might activate reciprocal roles around whether or not you’d be accepted. We want to make this easier.
We’d also like to make it easier for people who are not training or trained in CAT to become involved. Perhaps you are someone who has experience of using CAT as a therapy, or as a tool for care planning. If you would like to become involved in some aspect of our work as an ‘expert by experience’ then we would be interested in hearing from you. This could involve contributing to training in some way, whether that is face-to-face, or by offering something written, or recorded.
So how can you approach us – who is the go to person?
You can find out a little about each Catalyse workstream through the website. There are blogs about some of the areas and we hope this will build over time. Where relevant we will have provided job role descriptions. This is easier to do for some workstreams than for others. You may see something that attracts you. It may stimulate interest and ideas. Or you may have an idea yourself which isn’t already on offer but could be related to one of the Catalyse workstreams.
Please feel free to contact the relevant workstream lead (you can find this on the People Working with Catalyse page. You can contact the Chair, or any member of the Executive. Perhaps approach someone who you already know. Or of course you can contact our administrator Frances Free. Once we know your area of interest, we can have a discussion and plan some next steps.
We need people with time and energy who are interested in working together to further promote CAT across the North.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Catalyse Executive: Dawn Bennett, Rhona Brown, Jo Coggins, Jenny Marshall, Sarah Littlejohn
Updated April 2022
