About this course

Systemic family therapy involves working therapeutically with individuals together with their families and/or significant others, enabling the use of individuals’ relationships as a resource. It can sometimes include relational work with individuals, psychoeducational approaches and multiple family groups.

This course provides a strong focus on you as a clinical practitioner. You will gain the capacity to recognise multiple contexts, including professional and political discourses, that inform your work. In addition, you will develop your systemic practice skills.

The course consists of the following elements:

• theoretical seminars
• application seminars
• whole-day events
• personal tutorials
• clinical work

Theoretical seminars combine theoretical and experiential learning with an emphasis on interactional learning. In smaller application groups, you will be expected to present your own experience using systemic theoretical concepts.

You will undertake presentations on personal and professional issues, illustrating an aspect of systemic theory.

You will attend two full-day events which include presentations and workshops by systemic clinicians.

For successful completion of the intermediate course you will need to have completed the following required clinical work with families:

• 60 hours of face-to-face clinical work over the year. This is approximately three sessions a week
• 80% of this face-to-face work must be with families and couples
• 20% of face-to-face work may be systemic consultation, systemic work with individuals or being part of reflecting team

It is preferable that students have a variety of work which includes families that are different to their own and includes liaison with the external professional system. The therapeutic work needs to be ongoing and not only consist of initial assessments or appointments.

You will need to ensure that you receive monthly systemic supervision for your clinical work. The supervisor may not hold clinical responsibility for the case; clinical responsibility rests with the senior clinician responsible for the management of the case in the workplace/placement. Your work can be supervised live or retrospectively.

Summary of intermediate year

Term one

You will look at applying systems at different levels of complexity including workgroups, organisations and communities. You will examine effects of your family of origin and consider the impact of race, gender, culture, sexual orientation, class and physical ability upon yourself and your family of origin, and connect these ideas and beliefs to your professional practice.

Term two

You will develop an in-depth examination and critical evaluation of the theoretical basis of the systems approaches and their development, together with an exploration of current debates and developments in thinking and practice. You will examine broader applications of systemic theory and analyse how other theoretical approaches overlap and differ.

Term three

You will undertake the ‘Presentation and analysis of a systemic interview’ project in order to demonstrate your systemic practice by presenting an audio or video excerpt of a clinical interview with a family to a panel of tutors and analysing this in detail. You will develop the ability to think about your work contexts and to intervene in complex work situations involving working with other professionals and other agencies.