Tag Archives: CPD

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Bringing Home Some Gold to Café CAT

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Would you like to share, or hear about, some “golden nuggets” from this year’s ACAT conference in Keele?  Come along to Café CAT Manchester on Wednesday 25th July where we’ll be bringing back some highlights and opening these up for discussion whether you attended or not.

The twenty-fourth annual ACAT conference is almost upon us, taking place between the 5th and 7th of July in Keele.  Conference themes include therapist authenticity, creativity, and use of positive resources in cognitive analytic therapy.

Clive Turpin is offering a workshop there about Café CAT. This will include an introduction to the concept and history of the meetings, and also an experiential taster of its conversational approach.  To quote from the workshop outline:-

“Clive will introduce the topic and encourage the voices of others to contribute on the subject of therapist authenticity. This provides a valuable and rich opportunity to explore the topic as a group through conversation, rather than presenting a specific idea or approach in a usual workshop format. We don’t know where the conversation will go, which is both curious and exciting.”

The conference will be followed by some Café CAT reciprocation on 25th July – an opportunity for anyone attending the conference to feed back highlights, key learning and ideas to share with the CAT community in the north.  As usual these will be a springboard to conversation, and we hope a nice way to cascade proceedings even if you couldn’t make it to the conference this year.  Please come along if you’d like to hear, or share, these “golden nuggets” and develop the conversation.

This will be the fourth Café meeting and we’ll also be reviewing how it’s developing and future directions.

Looking forward to seeing you there at Z-arts, Hulme, Manchester.  The meeting will start at 6.15 pm and end at 8.15 pm; £5 on the door.

More information about Café CAT is at this link, or you can contact us to find out more.

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Café CAT: The Story So Far

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As the third Café CAT meeting approaches on 25th April, Clive Turpin reflects on the first two meetings and possibilities for future directions it might take.

Café CAT was inspired by the established approach of Café Psychologique that presents a topic for an open conversation. Café Psychologique meetings in various locations have included mortality, loneliness, music, amongst many many others.  It was a priority for Catalyse to promote and support an alternative informal CPD opportunity to those interested in and working with cognitive analytic therapy that also served to bring people together with a shared curiosity and interest.

So far Café CAT has met on October and January 2017 and the next is planned for 25th April 2018.  I’m really pleased that we have a new voice for this one, Suzanne Riddell, who wants to explore the topic of similarities and differences between NHS and private therapy work. Do they each carry particular impressions and expectations? What’s the view from “inside” or “outside” of one or the other? What are our experiences and where does the reality lie?

The maiden Café CAT’s title was “What state are we in?” which focused on how we think about, approach and integrate states into our work. To get the Café underway I presented the first two topics with the hope that we could encourage others to get involved.  At the first event I took a slightly more active approach in leading the session to get things going.  It was great to get two new voices of Vikki and Lucinda to put a blog together sharing their experience of the evening.

Next up was “Exploring the tools of CAT and what’s kept post training” in January this year.  After introducing the topic we quickly moved into a more conversational approach, which was the original aim of the Café.  We were also in a cosier room which no doubt impacted on the feel as we were all sat around a double table arrangement, compared to the large open space before. The conversation went in all kinds of directions and opened up new ideas, highlighted some differences and left us all with new some things to consider.

One of the things that I find most exciting about these open conversations is that you don’t know where it’s going to go and what you’ll encounter. Each event has left me with a lot to reflect on and influenced my practice thereafter.  In addition to this I’m getting to meet new people and those that I haven’t seen for a while.  It’s like a social win, a professional practice win, and a general brain/mind win and obviously a great way to connect with others.

I’m really keen to promote and keep new voices active within the Café.  I’ve got lots of ideas myself, however a variety of voices and differing views are so enriching. So as well as a summary on the Café so far this is also an active invite to bring something that you feel passionate or curious about or interested in and want to sound out an idea or experience with others. This would be greatly welcomed to keep Café CAT open and diverse, so if you have an idea get in touch and we’ll see if we can get it into the Café schedule.

We’re also interested in this developing in other areas, such as Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool, (as well as other areas of Manchester) where there are large CAT communities.

Here are a few ideas for some future Café CAT meetings:

  • Research in CAT: challenging myths and reflecting on what we might have to contribute
  • Storytelling: How we tell them, the importance of them, who they’re meant for
  • Social media: the impact and how this comes into or bumps against therapy
  • Experiences of learning and teaching CAT: trainees, practitioners, psychotherapists
  • Attending to and working with feelings in CAT
  • Creativity, play and playfulness in CAT
  • Adapting CAT for different client groups (eg children, people with learning disabilities)

Contact Clive for more information or to share ideas about future Cafe CAT meetings.  You can follow him on Twitter at  @Clive_Turpin.  You can also follow tweets about the Café through its hashtag #CafeCatalyse.  Otherwise join Suzanne Riddell and other northern CAT colleagues by coming along to the next meeting.

You can subscribe to the Catalyse blog by providing your details below.  If you do, you’ll receive an automatic email notification of any new blog posts when they’re published.

Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash
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What State Are We In? All ready for Cafe CAT

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This Wednesday, 11th October, will see the first of our new evening Café CAT events taking place at Z-arts in Hulme, Manchester.  This is an open meeting with a focus on informal CPD and networking for the CAT community in the north.

Clive Turpin will lead the first meeting, introducing the topic of:

What state are we in? Reviewing how states are incorporated into maps and our work

Bring along your thoughts, pens, paper, and of course your states of mind, for an evening of connecting, conversation and mapping.  If you have any favourite papers or resources on the topic that you think will be helpful to share, you can bring them along on the night or leave a comment below.

Entry costs £5 on the door, to cover costs.  We’ll start at 6.15pm and end at 8.15pm.  Please arrive in good time to be with us for the start, when Clive will share some initial thoughts on the topic.

There will be a bar and light snacks available to purchase.  Details of how to find the venue are available here.  There is on-street parking for which there’s no charge after 6 pm.

We hope that others within the local CAT community will get involved in suggesting topics or leading future Café CAT meetings in Manchester or further afield.  So please come along or contact us if you’d like to be involved further.

 

Skills Lab: Using Technology in Therapy: #techCAT16

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CAT Psychotherapist Clive Turpin shares reflections from the last Skills Lab held on 14th October 2016.

The last Skills Lab at our twice-a-year Projects Forum was led by Jo Varela, a Clinical Psychologist and CAT Practitioner working in Sheffield with children and young people, and also with people with a learning disability.  Jo has a lot of interest of how technology can enhance therapy as another tool of engagement.  Since the Skills Lab took place, she published an article on this in the Winter 2016 edition of Reformulation where her thoughts are outlined in more detail.

The hour started with the question “what apps do you use and what do they provide for you?”.  The answers seemed to parallel various aspects of therapy: connection, purpose, memory, prompts, information, validation, improvement, communication and reinforcement.

We thought about how apps can be used to tell a story, or function as a mobile form of memory. Someone stated the fascinating idea of curating their profile and the idea of a museum of self.

We reflected on these answers, what our phones mean to us and what happens when they’re lost, misplaced or damaged. We thought about how disconnected we can feel when parted from our customary devices.

This moved on to a reflective exercise considering the reciprocal roles we hold towards our phones, what we get from them and how the relationship is maintained. This was an intriguing process where our core reciprocal roles and patterns quickly become evident in how we relate to our phones…. Why should that be surprising? But initially it was!

After reflecting on this as a group, we looked at a range of different apps and how they can be used to support the work of cognitive analytic therapy.  Jo mentioned several CBT-based apps recommended to her by clients (she lists these in her article).  Sifting through the many available apps for ones that are useful, relevant to CAT practice and acceptable to clients can be a challenge, so hearing about these was helpful.  Starting such a  conversation raises lots of hope and excitement but at the same time throws up many questions too about privacy, safety, and effectiveness.  From a CAT perspective we thought that apps could be particularly useful in helping people recognise when they are engaging in patterns that cause them problems. We also liked the potential of mobile based diaries.

Jo and Steve Kellett are in the process of developing an app specifically for CAT, in partnership with Catch, the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare.  They’ve surveyed CAT practitioners about what they want in a CAT app, using the questionnaire here. From this they have created two versions and a third will be refined after feedback from clients who have already completed a cognitive analytic therapy. They plan to conduct a feasibility and pilot study early  this year, where current clients try to use the app and will be interviewed about how they’ve found it.  Catalyse is supporting this venture with both some funding and the involvement of therapists and clients from our Sheffield Psychotherapy Practice.  It’s exciting to be part of this initiative.  Perhaps once the app is fully developed, another Skills Lab can help practitioners become confident to use it in therapy.

What apps have you found useful either personally or in your therapy work?  What problems or concerns do you have about suggesting or recommending apps?  Leave a comment if you’re happy to share your reflections.

If you feel inspired to offer a Skills Lab, then get in contact with me or Cheryl Delisser and we will work with you to make it happen.  Our next Projects Forum takes place on 19th May 2017 in Manchester, and we’d love to hear any suggestions or offers to lead the Skills Lab hour.

Clive Turpin
CAT Psychotherapist

You can find Clive on Twitter – @Clive_Turpin
You can find Jo Varela on Twitter – @dr_jovarela