How it Works

Dr. Christine Dunkley is our Clinical Director with 30 years in the NHS, as a medical social worker and then a psychological therapist.

She and her team keep an eye on new therapeutic ideas coming from the evidence base. Here she describes the policy for recruiting trainers.

“In training our core aim is to provide tools for mental health professionals to improve outcomes. So we look at the emerging evidence base for new interventions, at long-standing theories that are still proving useful, and at recurring problems that crop up for clinicians that need deeper investigation. Then we identify the individuals taking a lead in research and discussion in these areas.

Before someone is invited to be one of our presenters they have to pass our quality assessment. They have to have experience with the client group and to be a recognised authority in the field. This generally comes with a strong publication record of papers, books or other materials that have been well-received.

But this is still not enough. With busy professionals taking time out of their working day to attend our courses, we want them to leave with clear, practical tools that they can use the very next day with clients on their caseload. We like our presenters to demonstrate how their theories translate into work with the patient, and to answer questions directly from the audience.

Over Covid a lot of our courses went online, producing some benefits: we could reach more people, and make recordings available to view after the main event. We have striven to keep the interactivity and personal feel of events, making sure delegates can always speak directly to the presenter – not just over the chat – and have opportunities to interact with each other. We now also plan to increase our in-person offerings to give us greater opportunities to mingle with like-minded people again. As a family firm, we want to build our community while meeting the varied needs of our customers.