Trainer: Dr. Andrew Smith

North London Buddhist Centre, 72 Holloway Rd, N7 8JG

Cost £1500

To pay in full click here

To pay in instalments click here 

The Professional Certificate in Therapeutic Practice with Sex Offenders has been developed to provide counsellors, psychotherapists and other practitioners such as psychologists, probation officers, social workers and project workers with the necessary knowledge, skills and tools to work therapeutically with this client group. The course also prepares practitioners to work with partners of such individuals and with couples, where one party is at risk of sexual offending.

The course is divided into five, two-day modules, offered at weekends. Saturday: Arrive 9.30 for start at 10 a.m.  Finish at 6 p.m. Sunday: Arrive 9 for 9.30 a.m.  Finish at 4 p.m. Each weekend module builds upon the others in order to provide an increasingly comprehensive level of training. The prerequisite for joining the Professional Certificate is completion of StopSO’s three introductory training days:

• 1. Crossing the line, including legal and ethical issues
• 2. Assessing risk
• 3. Treatment interventions

1. Participants who can evidence significant experience of working with sex offenders may be exempt from completing the above introductory days.

Module 1

Day 1 : Saturday 28th April 2018

Emotional issues for practitioners: including making best use of supervision (Andrew Smith)

• Course introductions
• Contracting with regard to confidentiality and conduct
• Anxieties and expectations
• Shame and stigma related to sexual offending
• Folk Devils, Master Status
• The statistical reality of sexual offending
• Moral Pollution
• Transference and Countertransference issues
• Vicarious Traumatisation
• Confirmation Bias
• Principles of Reflective Practice
• Examples of poor, unreflective practice
• Examples of good, reflective practice
• What is good supervision?
• What is needed from a supervisor, when working with this particular client group?
• How to make the most of supervision

Day 2 : Sunday 29th April 2018

Working with Family Members (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous sessions (Large group discussion)
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• Outline of Family System Theory
• Discussion of pros and cons of System Theories
• Working with other agencies, when involved with families
• The lessons which can be learnt from Serious Case Reviews, in terms of inter-agency working and child sexual abuse
• Who to potentially involve when working with family members and other agencies
• Discussion about small group case study analysis (Large group discussion)

Module 2

Day 1 : Saturday 19th May 2018  

Attachment and Trauma Issues (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous day
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• Four different attachment styles, and how they can relate to sexual offending
• Research regarding attachment and sexual offending
• What is trauma? Different types of trauma
• Research regarding trauma and sexual offending
• The trauma of being a victim of sexual abuse, and the relationship to sexual offending
• The relationship between dysfunctional attachment, trauma, patriarchy and common schemas/implicit theories, observed in the discourses of sex offenders
• Exploration of main issues arising from above
• Therapeutic approaches to working with sex offenders with trauma and attachment issues

Day 2 : Sunday 20th May 2018

Paedophiles: Offending and Non-offending (Sarah Goode)

• Welcome; introductions; ground rules; aims of the day (large group session)
• What it means to find oneself sexually attracted to children
• Thinking about paedophilia – definitions, prevalence, aetiology, treatment
• The experience of ‘Kevin’, the online paedophile community and findings from the Minor-Attracted Adult (MAA) Daily Lives Research Project
• Research findings on attraction and fantasies; self-identity; experiences of support; debate and dissent within the paedophile community
• Thinking about the interactions between paedophilia, online images of abuse, and sadism
• ‘Sexual libertarian’ and ‘child protection’ discourses in the literature
• Supporting the non-offending paedophile
• Film extracts from ‘The Woodsman’ and ‘The Paedophile Next Door’
• A new paradigm on adult sexual attraction to children; reflecting on sexuality, abuse and hope. The implications for practice

Module 3

Day 1 : Saturday 16th June 2018  

Power and Control Issues and Paraphilias (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous sessions
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• Psychological and sociological perspectives on power
• Sexual offenders with intellectual disabilities
• Psychopathology, personality disordered sexual offenders
• Different paraphilias
• When is sado-masochism a clinical problem?
• Treating voyeurs
• Treating exhibitionism
• Treating idiosyncratic harmful fetishes

Day 2 : Sunday 17th June 2018

Internet Offending and Sexual Addiction (Mike Sheath)

• Assumptions about internet offenders: Viewers or ‘Doers,’ ‘Crossover’ and ‘Direction of travel’
• ‘Traditional’ sex offender theory and counselling practice
• Similarities and differences between internet and contact sexual offenders
• Motives for viewing Child Sexual Abuse material: cognitive, sexual, emotional, practical
• Schema Theory and its applicability to ‘contact’ and ‘non-contact’ offenders
• Drivers of pornography addiction, disinhibition, and collecting
• The CSAM cycle. Combining traditional sex offender theory with addiction theory
• Raising empathy, offering insight and control
• Issues for partners (Large group discussion)

Module 4

Day 1 : Saturday 14th July 2018

Sexual Assault and Rape (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous day
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• What constitutes rape and different forms of rape
• Different forms of rape, illustrating different motivations and different triggers
• Sexual exploitation
• Different therapeutic approaches to treatment for individuals who perpetrate sexual assault and rape of adults 

Day 2 : Sunday 15th May 2018

Working with Female Offenders (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous sessions
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• Emotional reaction to women who sexually abuse
• Theories of why more women are being convicted of sexual offences, and  why the impact of female offending is often minimised
• Backgrounds of females who offend
• Females who offend to please men
• Females who offend in ritual abuse settings
• Females who offend in gang cultures
• Females who offend against underage, non-related males
• Females who offend against their own and other peoples’ children

Module 5

Day 1 : Saturday 4th August 2018

Working with Adolescents (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous sessions
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• How did sex seem when you were an adolescent?
• How adolescent sexual offending is similar and different to adult sexual offending
• Adolescent sex offenders and denial
• Adolescent sex offenders and victim empathy
• Adolescent sex offenders with attachment trauma problems
• Adolescent sex offenders with male entitlement schema
• Working with adolescent sex offenders who are in care settings

Day 2 : Sunday 5th August 2018

Couple Work (Andrew Smith)

• Discussion of issues arising from previous day
• Summary of main learning covered so far
• Main challenges of couple work
• What are we trying to achieve in couple work?
• The tensions between co-dependency and improving the non-offending partner’s ability to protect
• The pros and cons of couple work
• Different couple work scenarios

At the end of the first day of each module, between 5 and 6pm, there is a one-hour learning group to reflect on integrating theory with practice. Students will also be offered two one- hour tutorial/supervision sessions via skype in between modules. Examination will be via students completing an on-going reflective learning log, and a viva. Completion of all the modules, the learning log and the viva is necessary to receive the Professional Certificate.

Cost £1500

To pay in full click here

To pay in instalments click here 

 

Individual days can be booked independently but preference will be given to those who have booked the Professional Certificate. Please contact [email protected] for further details.