Welcome To Our Practitioner Hub

Transcript Mel Welcome Video 0.3mb PDF

Transcript Katy on Hope – 0.24mb PDF

Testimonial

“I wanted to drop in and say how much I enjoyed the training you delivered on ‘common myths around disability and therapy’. I’m at the very start of my training and took a huge amount of learning away from the presentation, so a big thank you to you both.” – Laura, psychological therapist, January 2023

Who is the hub for?

Our hub is aimed at any professional psychological therapist (disabled and non-disabled) working with disabled clients with physical impairments and professionals who would like to learn more about disability, affirmative therapy and the social model. This portal will be useful to clinical and counselling psychologists, IAPT workers, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and CPNs for example. Other professionals such as social workers and occupational therapists, personal care assistants (PAs), paid and unpaid carers and advocates will benefit from our training too.

What does your £10 annual membership include? For just 19 pence a week you have access to:

  • Our introductory module: Common Disability Therapy & Support Myths – 1 hour programme (see below)
  • Our community forum where you can ask questions about the modules, your disabled clients (protecting confidentiality) and your own relationship with disability (we all have one). Our forum is moderated. It is also supported by a qualified disability therapist who answers your questions.
  • Email updates with news & events & resources

Once you are registered you can pay for additional modules (see below) and 1-2-1 supervision or consultancy. Your account is charged £10 annually for forum access and support with your clients. You can cancel your membership at any time by emailing info@spokzpeople.org.uk

As we grow there will also be group live events to discuss client work.

Your membership fee enables us to continue supporting disabled clients and their families.

Register Here

FAQ: “Do I need training? I don’t ‘see’ disability and treat my clients the same?”

If you have similar thoughts, don’t worry, these are very common responses we receive when we encourage therapists to seek specialist training around disability and the whole purpose of setting up this training hub. These thoughts come from a natural place of hope and expectation that as humans and therapists we can ‘do better’ than how society treats those from minority groups. If you have similar thoughts, it just indicates you will benefit greatly from our training, both for yourself and your clients. We encourage you to read Chris’ blog around the statement ‘I don’t see disability’: as a disabled person and therapist, it makes him “want to swallow his own eyeballs” when he hears it. He explains very eloquently how this statement is inaccurate because not only do we ‘see’ disability and difference, in fact we are able to recognise difference by the time we are 5 years old. He also shares how these statements can actually be quite harmful because we then (un)knowingly ignore a huge area of someone’s life.

FAQ: What is the social model view of disability? Why do you say ‘disabled person’ and not ‘person with a disability’?

This model recognises that besides the impact of an impairment, what disabled people and their families’ as well as research tells us is that what impacts their mental health most is how they are treated and segregated by society and its systems. Working from this view is usually the most empowering way to work with disabled clients, patients and families. You will learn more about this during your CPD. For example, we use the term ‘disabled person’ to acknowledge that someone is disabled by society MORE than by their ‘impairment’. The term ‘person with a disability’ puts the onus on the individual and as a result tends to ignore how society disables and segregates. Many disabled and nondisabled people are unaware of this distinction and may even prefer ‘person with a disability’ with the reasoning “they see the person first”.

Who are our trainers?

Our trainers are people with personal lived experience of difference and disability and/or are allies with many years of working in this field. Some have professional mental health qualifications. More modules will follow with different trainers and contributors. You can read more here about our collective training approach.

Support for your disabled client/patient and their family members? Check out our wellbeing community & programme.

As a non-profit organisation, revenue raised from our training goes towards supporting our trainers, educational outreach, developing training, website costs and supporting disabled clients & families, many of whom are on low incomes.

We are aware that our training fees are lower than other training of similar length and value: we offer it low-cost to encourage everyone to learn more about disability.

Register Here

Can’t afford or don’t wish to become a member? Other ways to learn more:

Do you have training you would like to reach more people?

Do get in touch on mel@spokzpeople.org.uk. You will remain in full ownership and control of your training. You can also opt to get involved with helping to run forums/chats/events related to your specific training. By having training from different therapists in one place, we can offer a wider approach to disability. We can also market our individual trainings as a group which will reduce costs. Our passion is 4-fold:

  • to improve therapy for disabled people by having more trained therapists
  • to support both temporarily able-bodied and disabled trainers to earn more passive income
  • to enable more professionals to find the right disability training
  • In the future, together as a community, we can use all the collated contacts to create an association or network, similar to BAATN (The Black, African, Asian Therapy Network) and Pink Therapy for sexual diversity, and have more power to create change within therapy associations, the media etc.

Accessibility

All videos are captioned and we also provide a transcript in PDFs. If you have any questions about membership or access needs (we are 93% W3C-compliant), please contact us on info@spokzpeople.org.uk before registering. If you become a member, we will do our best to respond to any feedback you have on increasing access and to rectify things we may have missed.

Testimonial

“I am so pleased that I have watched it at this point in my training so I can take these issues forward and be disability friendly. It was a great presentation. Thank you so much.” – March 2024

“Really helpful. I’ve already updated my BACP listing to reflect my ‘blurred boundaries’ working environments. Thank you.” – July 2023

“Thank you . Your presentation was brilliant, so informative and already got me thinking about what I can do to change my private practise.” – July 2023

“I have just completed Module 1 and I really enjoyed it. For a relatively small amount of money, you get access to lots of different resources. I absolutely loved the interview with Brian Watermeyer and I feel I need to watch it again to absorb all the knowledge that he shared.” – Klaudia Richter, counsellor, March 2022

Available Modules

Introductory Module: Common Disability Therapy & Support Myths – included in membership

  • Common myths that prevent us from engaging with disability
  • Common myths that prevent effective support of disabled people
  • 1 hour CPD

Module 1: Introduction to Working Affirmatively with Disabled Clients £30

  • Why is it challenging to engage in disability?
  • Literature evidence
  • What is a Social Model perspective?
  • Increase empowering interventions, support and therapy?
  • 5 hours CPD

Module 2: What’s Disability History Got To Do With Anything? £30

  • Disability History
  • The welfare state and society’s views
  • Therapy models
  • Disability models
  • The impact on our clients and us
  • 5 hours CPD

Module 3: Disability & Faith Introduction £10

  • Personal experiences of faith and religous beliefs
  • Introducing the topic of faith into your work
  • How disability is often viewed through a faith lens
  • 2 hours CPD

Module 4: A Client’s Experience of Accessing Therapy £10

  • A personal experience of accessing therapy
  • Practical considerations
  • The emotional impact
  • The Equality Act
  • 2 hours CPD

NEW! Module 5 – What’s it like to receive care? £10

  • 4.5 hours CPD to include:
  • What can we gain from supporting disabled clients?
  • Why is it challenging to engage in disability?
  • What do disabled people tell us of their experiences with therapy and support?
  • What does it mean to view disability from a Social Model perspective?
  • How can we increase empowering therapy?
  • This module is discounted from £30 to enable as many people as possible to access this vital information.
More Information On Modules?
Register Here

Testimonial

“I’m visually impaired, don’t have personal care needs, a PA or many medical appointments. So (and I realise how ridiculous this sounds as I’m writing it!) I felt a bit of an imposter when I first joined the live groups: not ‘disabled enough’.  However, now I have a better understanding of the social model, and what that really means in practice. That the biggest challenge, for all of us, is the disabling way that the world is set up. It’s what unites us. It doesn’t matter that we have different impairments, or different ‘levels’ of being disabled. I feel a real sense of shared solidarity around the challenges we all face. I’ve been attending the professionals consultation group with Mel. And this has been a really valuable learning space for me, as well as putting me in a space where I’m not the only disabled person, and there are others I can learn from on matters related to Disability. Alongside that, in my counselling training journey, I’ve met with numerous instances of hurtful disability discrimination. Recently, something clicked – I need to be better resourced: radical self-care, more time spent in places where I’m celebrated, not merely tolerated. The imposter feelings I had previously are no longer there. I feel I am in a safe, supportive environment, where I will be understood, and can learn and grow as a disabled person. It’s a nurturing space, in a world where nurturing spaces for disabled people are few and far between.” Marie – Counsellor, November 2024

 

“A huge thank you for this. The guidelines are absolutely brilliant. So well written and comprehensive but concise. They pack in so much! I will be sharing this with other therapists. It is completely in sync with my own thinking about therapy and disability. It has been quite isolating as a disabled therapist trying to work with people with acquired disabilities in a non-disabled environment, so it is very refreshing to read stuff written by someone who gets it completely. A brilliant platform and brilliant training” – Clinical Psychologist, March 2022