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I mean, what I've found over the years is that, for any course, but particularly the
CBP course, what you're looking for is whether a candidate has the ability to develop the
skills in theory, in practice and in understanding research, and is able to communicate that
both orally and in written form in various formats.
Yes, I mean yes you're absolutely right. In the interview process and application process,
we're not looking for people who are finished therapists; we are looking for people who
have the motivation and the basic skills and attitudes if you like, to become a skilled
therapist. And I was struck by, often, people that would
come through that I had been part of the decision making process had thought, you know, they're
really excellent interpersonally and their role play's really good, but they might be
struggling with the theoretical side. But because they've got the strength on the
practice side, it means they might have more cognitive space if you like, to concentrate
on really honing the theoretical side, or vice versa.
I mean, in the final analysis, even for qualified therapists, your ideal therapist is a mixture
of somebody who has very good interpersonal skills and good technical skills and theoretical
knowledge. But balancing each individually is different,
and occasionally you will need people that have almost the perfect balance.
The rest of us, we tend to be slightly over weighted on one side or the other, so slightly
better interpersonally than technically or vice versa.
But it's trying to find people who have the ability to develop in all three aspects.
Yes, so they've got the ingredients I suppose that they can kind of shape over the coming
three years or so. Did you want to move on now to look at the
KSA? The dreaded KSA, yes, let's look at the KSA.
This shouldn't be as dreaded because it really isn't that difficult.
So the KSA is what we said: Knowledge, Skills and Attitude framework.
What they are, is they're demonstrating equivalents to a core professional training; that's what
they're for. So in the knowledge category, one has to demonstrate
knowledge of life stages and human development, and this is often done by training about child
development, about cognitive development; emotional and social development, often across
the life span. They need to demonstrate knowledge of health
and social care approaches, and these are about understanding the sorts of organisations,
agencies, policies, procedures and legislation that supports the work of all these agencies.
Now we're not expecting candidates to have detailed knowledge of every statutory body;
every legal framework, but it's to demonstrate that you have worked in a setting and really
that you do understand, and that you've got some way of demonstrating that you understand
how these work. If there is a request for a service for a
social care agency, somebody doesn't just go out and deliver it; there's a process to
do that and the legislation regarding who's eligible for service and who isn't eligible
for the service, and to have some understanding about how health and social care framework
works. I also asked for knowledge of psychopathology,
not a word I'm particularly fond of, and diagnostic skills, but this is demonstrating that you
have some knowledge of the sort of problems and definitions that clients approach agencies
with. So you might know something about what constitutes
an emotional problem, what constitutes a mental disorder, what constitutes a psychological
problem, and equally we want some sort of demonstration that you have some basic understanding
of different sorts of models of therapeutic approaches.
So you wouldn't necessarily know all of them, but you might know something about systems
work or family therapy, something about the humanistic and integrative work, and maybe
something about psychodynamic work, or you might know a little bit about CBP.
It's just to demonstrate that you have some sort of knowledge of more than one psychotherapeutic
approach, because this means that you have some sort of critical stance outside of what
you're doing; you're not just kind of steeped in one sort of learning.
And then if we move onto the skills framework, the competency in key relationship skills
is what you'd expect really, that you've got reasonable interpersonal skills, you can show
active listening, you're respectful to clients, you're fairly coherent and genuine, and can
build relationships. Maintaining and managing records and reports
is exactly what it says it is, so most people who don't work with any sort of agency at
all, have to manage some sort of records; even if it's only a contact sheet or a telephone
record sheet, right up to people having to write notes from meetings they've had with
clients, or reports for other people in the organisation or external to the organisation.
And then there's a section on communication within services and with colleagues, and that
again is you demonstrating your ability to work with other professionals whether they're
inside your agency or outside your agency and that is demonstrated by things like: it
might be letters you have written or meetings that you've been part of, interagency meetings
or peer planning meetings, or meetings in the voluntary sector, to decide who does what
with certain client groups. And then along with this, you definitely need
to show that you understand risk, and have worked in some area where you have at some
level had to manage risk. It might just be that you have followed the
agency's procedures on risk, and they've trained you in what to look for, or it can be right
at the other end that you're responsible for actually doing risk assessments.
It could be any of those things, but you have to show some actual skill in this, because
this is not a theoretical; I mean it has a theoretical component but actually it's something
that you also learn by experience of following procedures.
What people don't do is make out risk assessments in their heads, well, they better not.
You also need to show that you understand some research, but that's just that you've
read things and can analyse and discuss: journal articles, research studies, and a commitment
to ethical principles. The ethical principle is slightly different
for BABCP and BACP. But, again, it's important that this is a
demonstration of skill; it's not a theoretical exercise.
It needs somebody to actually write a testimonial or a reference.
We've seen this with people or person working with a client group, and this person does
treat the clients with respect or this person is able to maintain appropriate boundaries,
or this person keeps confidentiality appropriately. And finally we have the attitudes section,
which are what it says really, the attitudes section, that the person is suitable at a
personal level. So the attitudes section of the KSA is usually
supported by referees' testimonials and the candidate writes some sort of mini synopsis
biography of their professional life or relevant bits of it.
So it says suitable at a personal level; it just means that the person has all of the
right qualities to be involved in interprofessional and interpersonal relationships with vulnerable
clients. So they don't have any criminal convictions,
there isn't any sort of history of aggression, they don't have a serious drinking problem;
I mean they're fairly obvious sorts of things. The attitudes part of the framework, is usually
supported by references and testimonials, and the candidate writes a mini biography
related to the things in this section of the grid.
Suitable at a personal level, is really no more complicated than it sounds.
It's suggesting that you need people who you've worked with, and to have some sort of responsibly
for your practice; whatever that practice was.
To say that you are a suitable person, this involves, usually, a clean CRB check, that
there's no history of the person being aggressive to the client group or being unreliable.
They're fairly basic things that you'd expect really an employer to be interested in.
An enquiry might mean that the applicant recognises that there's always further things to learn
and that they have a kind of critical stance to their own work.
So they can look back on their work and say "Well, that was okay then but now I know a
lot more from experience. I've learned this, that and the other and I approach my work
differently now. I recognised that there was a particular flaw in it and I don't want to
repeat that mistake, so I do it differently, but equally I've built on certain strengths
that I have, so I might be better at listening to people now or my ability to explain complex
things in simple terms has improved." The self-evaluation and reflections we've
talked about all the way through this podcast really, which is the ability to reflect on
your own values, priorities, how you do things and what you need to do to develop.
Receptive to a scientific practitioner approach is very much CBP oriented, and it means that
you feel, I suppose, comfortable with the idea that the work in CBP is supported by
research evidence and empirical knowledge, and in some ways the actual work you do might
have that embedded in it. So we might ask a client to test whether their
ideas about the world actually are accurate. And a good example of that would be what is
generally called the CBT theory A; theory B position, where a client might believe theory
A and everybody is looking at them in the supermarket and thinking bad thoughts about
them, and theory B might be well actually nobody is looking at you with any more frequency
than they look at anyone else, and one can't possibly know what people are thinking unless
they articulate thinking. And we would actually go out and set up a
behaviour experiment to test that out, and that's an example of the empirical approach
being embedded, not only in how effective CBP is, but actually being embedded in the
detail of clinical CBP clients. And finally you're asked to produce this biography
which is only 500-700 words, which is of your working life and supports the rest of the
grid in a way and the things it's asked for. Effectively, there's three sorts of evidence
that go in the grid, and it tells you which sort of evidence is acceptable in each section.
There's certificate evidence, so for instance, if we go back to the knowledge of human development,
if you've done some course at some point where one of the modules had human development as
one of the learning outcomes, you could put in a copy of that module's learning outcomes,
or a copy of the certificate for that course, which would count as evidence.
Equally, if you had training in working with vulnerable adults or communications skills
within an agency, you might put in the certificate from that, and some detail about what the
training was about, if it's not self-evident, to support part of your KSA grid.
And finally, really, there's testimonials from professional staff who've worked with
you, and the easiest way to construct the particular attitudes part of it, which is
testimonials, is to show the grid to somebody you want to write a testimonial for you, and
if they have the capacity because they've known you across those sections, to write
a little paragraph about each of the sections in the grid, all in one testimonial or reference,
because the way the grid works is you can put the same evidence into more than one place
on the grid, so the evidence in the testimonial that says that you are suitable at a personal
level, which will be about your personal values and equalities, might also end up in the commitment
to ethical principles, because there may be some overlap.
So you can use the same evidence in more than one section of the KSA grid.