Past Catalyse Events
Use of CAT in Consultancy: 5 Session CAT Approach
Skills Training
Using CAT to inform care planning whilst working jointly with the care co-ordinator and the service user
2-days led by Dr Angela Carradice
Please note this event has now passed.
Dates: 8th & 9th October, 2015 (Thursday and Friday)
Time: 10am to 4:45pm
Venue: Dalton Ellis Hall, University of Manchester, M14 5RL
Fee: £225 – ACAT members :: £250 – non-ACAT members
(This 2-day course includes lunch, refreshments and course handouts)
About the training:
This course was a detailed skilled training course on the use of Five Session CAT Consultancy. This is not the overview of different methods of CAT consultancy, but an in-depth training on one method of consultancy. The course follows on from the course Angela runs (sometimes with Dawn Bennett) on an overview of consultancy approaches at different levels of working. Previous attendance at the overview course is not essential.
Aims of the Course:
‘Five 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 come with some form of personality disorder diagnosis and because of the difficulties that the service users’ experience, mental health teams can understandably find it difficult to provide effective treatment approaches. All 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 aiming to ‘do no harm’. The outcomes reported from using the approach are positive, for both care co-ordinators and service users.
The ‘Five 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 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.
Difficulties for this client group include state shifting, powerful dynamics, difficult relationships with services, dissociation, difficulties with emotional regulation e.g. easily overwhelmed, and self abuse. ‘Five Session CAT’ has been developed by adapting therapeutic skills to work in a containing way with these difficulties. It is different to ‘doing CAT therapy’ and uses different emphases and approaches. The Skills Building courses provide an introduction to the approach, the key skills used and the chance to observe the skills being used and to practice the main skills with feedback from the trainers.
Who is the course for?
The course is specifically focused on building understanding and skills in using this application of CAT. It is particularly designed for those who provide 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. However, the course wouldn’t be particularly relevant to a professional who is working purely in a community psychological therapy role or working only individually with clients and is planning to continue to work mainly at this level.
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 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.
Details of the course facilitator:
Dr Angela Carradice
Angela 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 CAT North.
