Anti-oppressive and inclusive practice in counselling and psychotherapy training
21 November 2023

Anti-oppressive and inclusive practice in counselling and psychotherapy training

This event is for trainers and training providers of counselling and psychotherapy training courses which offer guidance and support on how to apply the toolkit in practice.

This event will be delivered by two members of the coalition who are experienced counselling and psychotherapy trainers. The authors of this first toolkit, Race is complicated: a toolkit for psychological therapies training, will provide an introduction to the toolkit. The presenters will offer guidance on how to apply it in teaching practice.

The programme for the event will be segmented to mirror the structure of the toolkit i.e.

• the institution
• the training programme
• the individual tutor

The event will include a short introduction to the toolkit by the authors and 3 presentations followed by Q&A. 

Book your place

9.40am – 9.50am

This session aim to introduce who Marcelline and Danielle are as practitioners, their journey to becoming ‘Routes Therapeutic Consultancy’ and the adventurous path of becoming authors of this trailblazing toolkit. They will offer a brief outline of the toolkit; the purpose it serves, what it means to them and the profession and how they would like professionals to engage with it. The purpose of the video is to invite professionals to understand who they are and what they stand for, to aid them in hearing the voices behind the toolkit. The video will entice professionals to open their minds into the topic that is race and its complications, begin to formulate questions and excite their senses to want to learn more.

This session will:

• provide an introduction into understanding the complications/discomfort surrounding race
• identify the loud silence of race and culture that is projected in the counselling and psychotherapy profession
• introduce the idea of ‘safeguarding’ race

The Coalition for Inclusion and Anti- Oppressive Practice brought together organisations with a shared mission to improve diversity within the counselling, psychotherapy and psychological therapy professions. They as a group commissioned the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit in 2021. The Toolkit was launched in October 2023. The initial focus of this Toolkit is on race and ethnicity.

This event will provide the practical guidance and support for the members in using the toolkit to improve clinical practice and training in counselling, psychotherapy and psychological profession. The trainers using the tool kit as the framework will support and enable the participants to reflect on how the objectives, ideas and suggestions set in the toolkit can be adapted and used in an everyday clinical, institutional, organisational and practical settings.

9.50am - 10.50am - Inclusion versus Anti Oppressive Practice
This section will explore the difference between inclusion and anti oppressive practice, highlighting that inclusion doesn’t always result in anti oppressive practices. We will discuss how we apply anti oppressive practice in our training, institutions and clinical practice.

The aim of this session is to:

• understand what anti oppressive practice means
• how we can truly embody this in work and clinical practice within our professional organisation
• recognise the barriers and challenges that are explicitly and implicitly present in being inclusive and anti oppressive in our work as clinicians, trainers and training organisations.

This session will include:

• an exercise asking participants to think about the difference between inclusion and anti oppressive practice
• look at the definitions of inclusion and anti oppressive practice
• Discuss how this can be done in a clinical practice
• How to apply anti oppressive practice in training, institutions, as trainers, programme leaders etc

11.00am - 12.00pm - Embedding ‘race’ in counselling and psychotherapy training and implanting changes to the curriculum

This session will explore how to best embed race into training. What the curriculum currently cover and what changes need to take place. Plus to identify what challenges may be hindering these changes and what support or resources programme leads and tutors may need to make these changes.

12.10pm - 1.10pm - Empowering trainers to enable students to deliver culturally and racially sensitive therapy

To explore how tutors can best teach and deliver training on race, alongside exploring how trainers can reflect on their own experiences of race and culture and how to create a safe and supportive teaching environment for tutors and students to deliver, teach and learn about culturally-sensitive counselling.

By the end of these session participants should have:

• increased awareness of the sensitivities of race and diversity at personal, professional, organisational and structural levels
• skills and understanding of how to embed anti-oppressive and inclusive practice at personal, professional, organisational, and structural levels
• knowledge and confidence in how to use the toolkit as an interactive guide to support the ongoing development of anti-oppressive and inclusive practice in relation to race and ethnicity at all levels
• increased confidence in enabling conversations about race and ethnicity during training to enhance the student experience and development of competence