Events and Calendar
Past Catalyse Events
The 5-Session CAT Approach: Skills Training
Using CAT to inform care planning whilst working jointly with the care co-ordinator and the service user
A 2-day workshop led by Angela Carradice & Dawn Bennett
Event Hashtag: #CATfive217
This event has now passed
Some feedback from participants:
What was most useful, interesting or enjoyable?
Videos & very practical approach.
Discussion around experience with clients supported by video footage.
Watching video to see it in practice. Examples of how it has been used. Hopeful focus.
Having a case example followed through from start to end to structure techniques on.
Use of case examples and opportunity for role play.
Practical introduction to a model – with many opportunities for discussion
Date: Mon 30th & Tues 31st October 2017
Time: 10am to 4:45pm
Venue: Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester, M13 9LW
Fees: ACAT member :: £230.00
non-ACAT member :: £250.00
Overview of workshop:
This course was a detailed skills training on the use of the 5-Session CAT Approach. This was not the overview of different methods of CAT Consultancy, but an in-depth training on one method. The course followed on from the course Dawn and Angela run on an overview of consultancy approaches at different levels of working, but previous attendance at the overview course was not essential.
Aims of the two day workshop:
‘5-Session CAT’ is an approach inspired by Mary Dunn’s work in Hull, but developed in Sheffield in the context of integrated team working within CMHTs. The approach is offered for referrals to help service users who sound unsuitable for individual psychotherapy and often have significant risks and instability in their lives. The service users often attract a diagnosis of some kind of personality disorder. Because of the difficulties that the service users experience, mental health teams can understandably find it difficult to provide effective treatment approaches. Mental health workers can experience the client’s presentation as challenging and this sometimes results in unhelpful repeated patterns between clients and the services. The approach was developed to enable effective ways of team working with this client group, whilst also focussing on the aim to ‘do no harm’. The outcomes reported from using the approach are positive, for both care co-ordinators and service users.
The ‘5-Session CAT’ approach involves working together with the service user and the worker (e.g. care co-ordinator) to develop a ‘here and now’ CAT map of the repeating patterns/states, to inform case management. The approach involves working with the risks, developing goals, agreed ways of working, plans for change and a contract with the service including planned endings. The therapist/consultant typically works with the client and care co-ordinator for five sessions, including time alone with the care co-ordinator to enable them to work well using the agreed approaches. The approach can also involve additional support for workers in the team, if appropriate.
It is particularly designed for those who provide direct work with service users and indirect consultancy as internal consultants or are planning to begin. Their likely professional background would be a clinical psychologist or another mental health worker whose role includes consultancy work. The skills used in the approach are also well suited to being adapted to a variety of different contexts and can inform other kinds of work.
It is essential that participants have sufficient CAT knowledge and skills to be able to focus on the purpose of the course. It is best suited to CAT practitioners, those in training or who have completed a work-based placement in CAT and have had supervised practice of a least one CAT therapy. The clinical case examples will all be drawn from adult secondary level mental health services (community) and considered complex, with diagnosis being some form of PD.
Facilitators: The two-days were led by Dr Angela Carradice and Dr Dawn Bennett
Angela Carradice is a consultant clinical psychologist working in both the NHS and private practice. Her NHS career has largely been working in a split post across both adult inpatient and community services. More recently Angela has focussed on community services and she currently leads on CAT and PD across the CMHTs in Sheffield. In private practice, Angela provides training (mainly on working with complex cases) and supervision for both direct and indirect work. Angela is a CAT practitioner and CAT supervisor, whose work has also been influenced by systemic thinking and organisational psychology. Her passion is to work as an integrated team member using CAT to meet the needs of the context in which she works. This has involved developing ways of using CAT indirectly, as well as providing individual CAT therapy for service users. Angela is also a trainer and supervisor with Catalyse.
Dawn Bennett is consultant clinical psychologist. In the NHS she has worked in in-patient and community services in adult mental health and as clinical lead. Dawn is a CAT psychotherapist and CAT supervisor. She is Director/Co-ordinator of the two year Catalyse Practitioner Training course, and also has a lead role in ACAT’s Training Committee. She has run CAT skills courses for generic mental health workers in community and in-patient teams and is interested in promoting psychologically informed care.
