Counselling Children and Young People Using Creative Arts | Advanced Diploma at Leeds Beckett University

Course Details

Learn how to use play and a range of creative arts to counsel children and young people (CYP) between the ages of four and 18 effectively.

Designed for qualified counsellors and delivered by The Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy (APAC), this course will expand your range of therapeutic skills by teaching you how to integrate activities such as sand tray modelling, music, drama, art, puppetry and clay modelling into your skill set. Combining taught theory with clinical placement work, you will enhance your holistic expertise and you will be able to help CYP with social, emotional, behavioural and mental health issues so they can realise their potential. Please note that all applications and queries for this course will be dealt with by APAC and start dates may differ depending on your location of study. For more information visit apac.org.uk.

Please note that all applications and queries for this course will be dealt with by APAC, and that start dates may differ depending on your location of study. Find out more on the APAC website.

Course Benefits

This course will enhance your existing counselling skills, such as establishing a therapeutic relationship with CYP, working within an appropriate ethical framework and other statutory requirements aimed at protecting children. You will be given an understanding of the neurobiological development of CYP as well as the informing psychological theories including Rogers, Axline, Jung, Winnicott and Bowlby. You will become a more self-reflective and critical counsellor, communicating with the CYP in whatever therapeutic creative arts media they have chosen - the younger the child, the greater the need for non-talking creative therapies. Your enhanced skillset will help to foster an improved rapport with CYP and help them to heal. You will be taught a diverse range of therapeutic skills so that you can develop integrated counselling programmes that can be tailored to the individual. This Integrated Holistic approach distinguishes this course from more traditional single method techniques. You will put into practice what you have learned during 50 hours of clinical placements undertaken in your workplace, 10 hours of which will be supervised. This is a practical course that also includes free software for therapy recordkeeping to meet the latest data protection legislation requirements.