• To develop skills in understanding the communications of child and adolescent clients.
• To develop skills in detailed observation and recording of interaction with children.
• To develop skills in understanding emotional reactions to clients and to be able to begin to develop an understanding of the impact of the client on the worker. To begin to use this understanding to make formulations about clients.
• To enable you to develop confidence in liaison and referral within the professional network.
• To begin to use the psychoanalytic framework of thinking when making assessments of interactions with children and applying this understanding to the child’s communications.
• To promote sensitivity to cultural, racial and gender differences and their impact on the relationship between worker and child.
• To enable students to gain an understanding of the impact of various forms of trauma on emotional development.
• To facilitate the development of confidence in co-operative practice with parents and carers.

Knowledge

• An overview of basic psychoanalytic concepts like transference and counter-transference, container-contained, the internal world, projection and projective identification
• How these ideas are applied in child development – infancy, latency and adolescence
• Elements of a therapeutic relationship – the importance of making emotional contact

Thinking skills

• The capacity to integrate and apply the theoretical knowledge to the work setting
• The capacity to make links and connections in understanding children’s communications on a symbolic level
• The independent development of a particular understanding of the student’s therapeutic role, leading to a greater range of responses with the child and in the decision-making process

Subject-Based Practical skills

• The capacity to engage and communicate with the child and to be able to sustain the relationship within the boundaries of a therapeutic setting
• The capacity to understand elements of defensive processes
• The capacity to develop observational skills and write up detailed reports of interaction with child clients, noticing one’s own emotional responses

Skills for life and work (general skills)

• Encourages the capacity to become more self reflective
• Enriches the student’s capacity to tolerate the personal intensity and vulnerability of showing others how one works and thinks about one’s work
• Enhances ability to think and discuss ideas in a large and in a small group
• Helps students pay appropriate attention to issues of difference and to maintaining thoughtful anti-discriminatory practice
• Introduces the idea of networks around children that may act out some dynamics of the case

This is a part-time programme - one afternoon a week for one year.

The teaching year is divided into three 10 week academic terms, starting in October and ending in July.

All teaching for this one year part-time programme takes place on a Monday afternoon. Lectures are from 1.45-3.00pm. There is a break for 45 minutes when students may go to the canteen for tea, coffee biscuits etc. During this time they can get to know one another, use the library or have an individual tutorial (two per term). From 3.45-5.00pm the Work Discussion Seminar takes place.

• In order to gain a Postgraduate Certificate, you will need to obtain 60 credits at Level M.
• In order to gain a Postgraduate Diploma, you will need to obtain 120 credits at Level M
• In order to obtain a Masters, you will need to obtain 180 credits at Level M. These credits will include a 60 credit level M core unit of advanced independent research.

Knowledge is developed through

• Lectures and discussion of basic psychoanalytic concepts and issues of race and culture in therapeutic work with children
• Broadening this knowledge through reading and application of theoretical ideas in practical work situation
• Integrating theory and practice through writing essays, organising material and presenting work in small seminars

Thinking skills are developed through

• Making links to work setting through interacting with lecturers in larger group
• Presenting own work and commenting on thoughts stimulated by the presentation of colleagues’ work in small group and making links with knowledge gained through theoretical study in larger group
• Developing sensitivity to what is happening in the interactions with a child and the effects or consequences of intervention
• Reflecting on knowledge gained by putting thoughts together in two essays
• Individual discussions with personal tutor on standards required for the written submissions and integrating material for these submissions

Practical skills are developed through

• Applying theoretical knowledge to individual work setting with particular child clients
• Developing observational skills in writing detailed accounts of interactions with child clients, involving writer’s own actions and emotional reactions as well as those of clients
• Observing the relationship between direct clinical experience and theoretical concepts
• Developing an ability to prepare for and participate fully in seminar presentations
• Considering and discussing the professional decisions the worker has made
• Extending the worker’s frame of reference and understanding so that interventions can be based on a fuller appreciation of the emotional factors at work in relationships involving therapeutic communication with children
• An appreciation of the scope and limitations of their own individual professional roles and a sense of group processes in the work setting or institutional factors which may influence the setting in benign or maladaptive ways

Skills for life and work (general skills) are developed through

• Discussion based seminars enhance the capacity for self reflection and the transferable skills of making links between what is observable in the external world and what is happening in terms of emotional responses in the internal world of the worker and their client
• Students develop the ability to tolerate the anxiety of having their working practice observed in detail by others
• Feeling states may be exposed and brought to the surface in the small group setting and the range of feeling states can be extended and understood in terms of the interaction with particular child clients

List here the assessment methods that you use. Once again, in order to demonstrate that all learning outcomes are assessed, it might be helpful if you use one of the approaches suggested above e.g..

Knowledge is assessed by

• Theory and Work Discussion Essays. These need to have a clear and straightforward style and structure, with sub-headings if appropriate. They should be well written and proof-read for accurate punctuation and spelling
• Evidence needs to be shown of an integration of the psychoanalytic literature read on theory and child development, with illustrations from work presented in the work discussion seminars
• They need to show evidence of awareness of intra and interpersonal processes in interaction during therapeutic communication with children

Thinking skills are assessed by

• Clarity of style and understanding in the essays, quoting relevant texts
• Capacity to integrate theory and practice as evidenced in the essays and in the seminars and lecture participation
• Capacity to explore connections between psychoanalytic theory, culture and race, modes of learning within relationships as child development unfolds; mental processes and family dynamics and their impact on a child’s experience
• Evidence in the essays of an understanding of the impact of the external environment (including institutional processes) on child development
• Evidence in the essays and in group discussion of the ability to read and think critically, drawing together key themes

Practical skills are assessed by

• Written presentations in small groups showing evidence of the developing capacity to observe self and other in interaction
• Applying theoretical ideas to personal work experience in one’s professional role in essays, presentations and group participation
• Ability to use help offered by staff and personal tutors in essay writing skills and to use feedback provided during the year

Skills for life and work (general skills) are assessed by

• Evidence through written submissions and group participation of increasing capacity to hold different points of view and yet make up one’s own mind
• Markers of essays, group leaders and personal tutors having a sense of the students’ enhanced confidence in expressing themselves and their ideas, tolerating differences and being challenged by being exposed to new ideas on a cognitive level and new areas of experience within the self on an emotional level
• Students themselves reflecting on their own experience of the programme and discussing this in groups and in written reports or with personal tutor