February 14 – 20, 2010 Innsbruck, Austria

Rationale
Many school and educational psychologists will be involved in supporting the introduction of strategies that aim to promote children’s management of feelings, cooperative work with others and improving behaviour in order to improve their academic learning. This comes at a time when there is increasing concern about the mental health and emotional well-being of children and young people. For instance in the United Kingdom, the Children’s National Standards Framework Standard 9 clearly states that the government wants to see “An improvement in the mental health of all children and young people”(DoH, 2004). It goes on to describe how between ten and fifteen percent of children and young people have a mental disorder that would meet the criteria for a clinical diagnosis and a similar number of children have less serious problems that would benefit from some help. In total, it estimates that around two million children in the UK alone are in need of intervention to improve emotional well being, mental health and resilience.

The economic benefits of providing early intervention through the use of CBT with adults was highlighted by Richard Layard (Layard, 2005) and taken as a call for an increase in trained personnel able to carry out this intervention. A survey of training completed by mental health professionals revealed that the potential demand could not be met in the UK for children (Stallard, 2007). It is envisaged that the situation in the UK is similar to that of other European countries and this training programme aims to address the demand for trained personnel to support the development of mental health and well-being in of children and young people.

Structure
The course tutors will be experienced educational psychologists from the UK led by Dr Garry Squires (see presenter details below). The programme will last 5 days and involve lecture, workshop activities, discussion, experiential learning and role play. Skill development will lead from practise activities that are closely supervised by the tutor team and will necessitate small group and paired working. With this in mind it is anticipated that the tutors will both lead presentations and sessions and support in other sessions. The course would be designed for a minimum of 20 participants and maximum of 30 participants.

The course will draw on materials that are already in use at the University of Manchester for trainee educational psychologists (with some updating and adapting for the target audience) and cover:

• Basic counselling skills and general principles
• The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Framework (The four systems of response model; Beckian Model)
• Increasing self awareness (Socratic questioning; collecting thoughts, feelings and behaviours; rating emotions; recent event analyses).
• From thoughts and feelings to assumptions and core beliefs (Further recent event analyses; accessing negative automatic thoughts; checking out thinking; accessing core beliefs)
• The problem formulation template and its use
• The Clark-Wells model as a tool for designing interventions
• Specific intervention techniques to deal with cognitive and somatic symptoms (dealing with safety behaviours; freeze frame; alternative script; progressive muscle relaxation; role play; empty chair; use of diaries; collecting evidence; all or nothing thinking records; rating scales; positives notebook; alternative perspectives)
• Designing therapeutic programmes and session structure (typical CBT programme and structure; use in community settings; tasks to be completed; planning from referral to discharge)
• Maintenance and relapse prevention (preparing for termination; coping cards; scripts; dealing with relapses)
• Systemic issues (schools as systems; families as systems; making use of existing support networks and systems; using the CBT model as a consultation tool)
• Group CBT (planning group work; pros and cons; session structure and activity design)
• Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of individual CBT
• Researching CBT and evaluating service delivery
• CBT for difficult to reach clients e.g. ASD and LD
• Planning for implementation on return to home countries

Anticipated outcomes
By the end of the course it is anticipated that participants will be able to return to their own countries and use the CBT model in a number of ways:

• To offer direct support to individual teachers, pupils and families through short programmes of CBT
• To offer indirect support to children and young people through the supervision of adults in the support networks (teachers, parents) using the CBT model to guide consultation and design school based interventions
• To use the CBT model to inform assessment of emotional and behavioural needs
• To use the CBT model to design interventions to help address faulty thinking and emotional over-reaction or through teaching new coping strategies to build resilience.

References
DoH. (2004). CAMHS Standard, National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services: The Mental Health and Psychological Well-being of Children and Young People. London:

DoH Publications. Layard, R. (2005). Therapy for all on the NHS. Paper presented at the The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. Retrieved 5 July 2007, from http://www.scmh.org.uk/dev/dev_srch.nsf/$$Search?CreateDocument&Seq=1. Stallard, P. (2007).

Is there anybody out there? The results of the National Child Focussed CBT Survey. Paper presented at the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Children and Families conference organised by Association for Child and Mental Health; British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. Retrieved 11 April 2007, from http://www.acamh.org.uk/POOLED/articles/bf_eventart/view.asp?Q=bf_eventart_213513.

Programme outline (to be developed further if course is approved)

Day	Broad areas covered (to be developed further if course is approved)	Lead
1 Sun	Arrive. Evening meal followed by course introduction and outline	Garry Squires
2 Mon	Basic counselling skills	Charles Galletly
3 Tue	Intro to the CBT model, increasing self awareness, recent event analysis, problem formulation	All
4 Wed	Further development of the CBT model and Clark Wells model, maintenance and relapse prevention	All
5 Thur	Systemic issues, group work and evaluating CBT interventions	Sandra Dunsmuir and Garry Squires
6 Fri	Hard to reach clients. Planning for implementation. Course evaluation & certificates	Louise Bason, Garry Squires
7 Sat	Depart

About the Training Team
Dr Garry Squires, BEd (Hons), BSc (Hons), MSc, DEdPsy, Dip Psych, AFBPsS, CPsychol, CSci. Co-Director, Professional Doctorate in Educational Psychology, University of Manchester

Garry trained as an educational psychologist at the University of Manchester in 1996 and has worked as an EP in Staffordshire involved in direct casework, supporting schools and training teachers. His research skills developed as part of the doctorate at Manchester and he now teaches research methods as part of his role at the university. He is also deputy chair of the Research, Audit and Development group for Staffordshire CAMHS.

Garry’s interest in CBT started after his initial training as an EP and in trying to evaluate the impact of group based CBT in middle and secondary schools. The CBT model now forms part of his work and is used with children, adolescents and school staff. He is particularly interested in how CBT can be applied within the supportive networks that exist in schools and how it can be used alongside other interventions. Garry has designed the CBT module for the Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology at Manchester and has been developing research with colleagues at UCL to evaluate the impact of this training on outcomes for children and on the experiences of trainee psychologists trying to embed CBT in their practice within school and local community settings. He has been supervising doctoral projects run by EPs that involve applying CBT with pupils with autism and evaluating training to help school personnel apply CBT principles.

Garry has published research in this area and presented his work at international conferences. He has also run CBT awareness workshops for educational psychologists training at the University of Birmingham and University of Sheffield, for teachers and teaching assistants within Staffordshire and for students on other post graduate courses at Manchester University. Along with Sandra, he is contributing a session on the use if CBT within school settings as part of the Postgraduate Certificate / Diploma / MSc in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other Outcome-Based Interventions course at UCL. He has been described as a leading expert in the application of CBT by educational psychologists and provided training for several local authority educational psychology services.

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Dr. Sandra Dunsmuir, BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD, AFBPsS, CPsychol, FHEA. Co-Director, Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology, University College London

Sandra completed her educational psychology training at UCL in 1986 and her PhD in 2000. She has had extensive experience working as an educational psychologist in four different local authorities in the south-east of England. Sandra has been involved with the training of educational psychologists at UCL since 1990, first as an Academic and Professional Tutor and since 2006, as Co-Director of the Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology. Sandra has developed a major course module on CBT with children and adolescents for the initial training doctorate for educational psychologists at UCL.

Supervision is seen as a crucial and integral part of professional training and Sandra and colleagues are defining processes, evolving procedures and adapting tools to support and evaluate this. She also led the development of innovative postgraduate courses at UCL and along with colleagues from clinical psychology, is Joint Course Director of the Postgraduate Certificate / Diploma / MSc in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other Outcome-Based Interventions programmes. Sandra has embedded CBT within her educational psychology practice and continues to work on a regular basis with children, their families and teachers in delivering a range of interventions in school and community settings. The evaluation of outcomes is a central aspect of this process and she has been collaborating with Garry Squires at the University of Manchester in developing research and practice protocols for this purpose.

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Louise Bason, BPsy(Hons), PGCE, MSc (LD), MSc (EdPsy), CPsychol.

Louise is an experienced educational psychologist working with Knowsley Local Authority. She is chartered with the British Psychological Society and is also a registered educational psychologist in Malta. She previously held a specialist post working with young people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and challenging behaviour and has provided training to various staff members within this field. Louise also holds a Masters in learning disabilities from the Tizard Centre, University of Kent at Canterbury. She has been involved in inclusion projects in Malta and the UK. She is currently completing a doctorate in educational psychology and this involves developing and managing action research projects. Two of her doctorate projects have involved exploring the use of aspects of the CBT model with young people with learning difficulties and Autistic Spectrum Disorder to see whether this may have beneficial uses for practising educational psychologists.

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Charles Galletly, BA(Hons), PGCE, MSc(EdPsy)

Charles is an experienced senior practitioner educational psychologist with a specialism in the area of behaviour, working for Staffordshire Local Authority. He has a particular interest in the use of cognitive approaches with families, teachers and parents including both direct therapeutic work but also the application of techniques and models as part of a consultative approach. He is currently working towards a Masters degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). While his work is applicable to all young people with emotional and anxiety disorders, Charles is exploring how it might be applied with youngsters with ADHD and his initial results are encouraging. With a deep interest in NLP, Charles is willing to draw upon best practice across a diversity of therapeutic approaches to guide his work in helping young people with diverse and challenging behaviours.