private practice Archives

Creativity – a new journey

May 30, 2020 By Jane Williams

Why creativity?

Exploring creativity – both for work with clients and for ourselves – is important to our team. I’m sure you will have noticed the emphasis on creativity in our workshop programme.

Not to be outdone by the trainers at TA Training Organisation, I have also started a journey to explore creativity – using a new book, ‘You are an Artist’ by Sarah Urist Green as a resource.

Sarah has put together a whole range of easy to assignments to help access new ways of expression and creativity. It is about exploration rather than skills development – refreshing when many other resources are about developing a hobby.

In this series of weekly Creativity posts, I’ll share how I got on with my explorative journey and, hopefully, you will find elements to encourage you and ideas to use in client or supervision work.

I was very excited when the book arrived (but then I always get excited by new books). I had a quick skim through the contents and quickly saw that it was going to be fun. And challenging. And much, much, more.

Where to start – First steps

The book has sat on my desk for the last 5 days while I decided where to start. At the beginning perhaps? Well, no, I decided to start with one of the more (apparently) simpler exercises – adding elements to this visual image:

The assignment suggested annotating the picture with my own words, quotes from songs, movies or books, sketches or anything really as long as it gave meaning for me.

Old Boots

I struggled at first. The boots in the image feel very old to me. Maybe belonging to someone from WW1. Not something I have much experience of other than a shared cultural history.

Picture of boots - creativity opportunity

Old Roots

I then moved on to thinking about the boots’ origins. Who owned them? What did they do? Why leave their boots? I began thinking about my ancestors in Ireland working in the fields or factories. Does this picture speak to where I came from? My past being part of me now and my future?

In My Boots

This started me thinking about the phrase ‘being in my boots’ and what it means. To me, it means being firmly grounded and secure and truly me. Boots feel stable to me, not higher heels that can wobble as I walk but solid and supportive. Reliable and resilient.

Resilience

I was tempted by the Lord of the Rings quote above but then this led me to something Terry Pratchett wrote about Tiffany Aching in The Shepherd’s Crown. Whilst its about boots, obviously – I also feel it has a lot to say about resilience and the ability to manage life and its challenges.

Resilience is very important if I’m not going to be flattened by experience. This is true for me generally but particularly in the current Covid-19 times we are living in. But I don’t feel resilience is like a bomb-blast wall – a hardness developed as a response to negative things. There is something joyful about being secure in knowing I can march through anything or, with Peppa Pig, jump in muddy puddles.

What next?

It felt a relief but also very satisfying to pin down the picture to something that does represent how I feel. With the first assignment complete, I’m now a little less daunted and looking forward to the rest of the journey.

Final note

And finally, I’ve put together some images as A4 pdf templates that you might want to use with clients. Click on the buttons below to download. Or create your own.

Setting up in private practice. What do I need to consider?

February 7, 2020 By Jane Williams

You are at the point where you are thinking about the possibility of your own private practice. It can be both exciting and very daunting. You may be recently qualified or with years of experience as a therapist. Either way, all kinds questions come up about how to begin. I’ve included some headings below that you can use as a starting point.

How much time do I have?

Setting up in private practice can mean anything from seeing a few clients at home to launching yourself as a full-time therapist. Its important to think about how much time you want to spend in your practice. The answer to this will affect how much time and financial investment you put into the process.

What am I offering?

Think about what you are offering as a therapist – what client issues you would like to work with, whether you would be working with individuals, couples or groups – whether sessions would be in person, by phone or online. Answers to these questions can be used in your marketing later.

Where should I work?

Are you intending to work from home? It may seem like a simple solution but there are ethical, professional boundary and space issues to be considered if you go down this route.

If you are wanting to work from somewhere else you could rent your own space (such as a small office). You could hire a room in a therapy centre. Do some research about how much this would cost you per month or week. Find out what would work best financially. There may be additional costs that you need to factor in (like service charge or liability insurance in a shared office space).

Another thing to consider is whether you want to work from one place or share your time between two or more locations. You may have distinct client groups and different locations work better for them.

How will I get clients?

Where will your clients come from? You should think about the different sources; health insurance referral, EAP company referral, self-referred etc. How many client hours do you need to fill? Do you need to advertise your services? How much money do you have to put into this each month? Answers to all these questions will affect how you approach the issue of marketing your practice. It is important to be realistic about how much investment is needed in the early stages.

What about money?

As I mentioned at the start, the size of your practice will affect your financial status. You will need to keep adequate financial records. Do some research about self-employment and the legal and financial requirements before you begin. Gov.uk website is a good starting point.

Where do I go from here?

These are some areas to consider but where do you go from here? An excellent source of information is to tap into the wisdom of others who have already run their own practice. Talk to colleagues who have made the step. Find out what they learned and how they would do it a second time around. Most therapists I have met are delighted to help someone starting out.

We offer the First Steps to Successful Private Practice course – a one day course with the aim of helping you develop an action plan for setting up your practice. The next one takes place on Saturday 21 March 2020. Andy Williams is the trainer. He runs his own very successful private practice in counselling, psychotherapy and supervision and has supported many supervisees in launching their practices.

CARL: Acrostic to use when writing client notes

March 1, 2019 By Jane Williams

CARL is an acrostic to use with clinical notes: Context. Adequate. Relevant. Limited. Andy Williams, one of our Training Directors talks us through it.

Part of a series of materials to support you to become the best therapist that you can be.

Once of the questions that often comes up in supervision is about clincial notes and how to think about them. There aren’t rules about this but we do support our learners in thinking about this area.

C – Content. Thinking about the context in which we are working whether private practice, voluntary placements, charities etc. Some organisations have local procedures about how to approach clinical notes.

A – Adequate. The notes need to be adequate for purpose. I use them for reviewing treatment week to week and an overall view of the treatment plan. My notes need to be adequate as a reminder of where we have got to in the treatment sequence.

R – Relevant. Its very important that we don’t make conjecture or guess work and only record information that is relevant to the treatment. For example do the details given by the client in check in need to be recorded if they are not relevant to the therapy contract.

L – Limited. The final area in CARL. Think about a boundary around our work. What is in and out but also not putting in excessive details that aren’t linked to their therapy. You may also need to consider time boundaries.

It goes without saying that all clinical notes come under the GDPR regulations and data protection. Do make sure you get consent from the client about keeping clinical notes.

Want to know more?

If you are thinking of starting in private practice, our First Steps to Successful Private Practice 1 day course covers writing and keeping client notes in more detail and GDPR. Go to our Events Diary page for the next course dates.

Setting up in Private Practice.

April 16, 2015 By Jane Williams

Here is another in my series of tips and how to’s. This time I have turned my thoughts to when I set up in private practice and all the things I know now, that I wish I had known when I first started. So, if you are beginning in private practice here are some ideas that I hope will be useful.

Geographical location. I think this is hugely important and is not necessarily as simple as practicing from where you live. The key question to answer is: does your current location offer enough opportunities for you to build a sustainable practice? It may not be as simple as “I’m in a large city or town so yes” because whilst there may potentially be a lot more people looking for counselling and therapy in a large city there will also be more therapists practicing. The opposite of course is also true, in a smaller town there may be less competition but will there be enough work to sustain you. Doing some quick research to look at how many therapists are listed in your area and the population size may help in making your decision.

Continuing on the subject of place – will you practice from home or will you rent premises? There are advantages and disadvantages to both, practical, financial and therapeutic. In your home the practical and financial advantages are that you have pretty much complete control over your environment and if you have suitable space, this can be a very cost effective and flexible option. From a personal perspective you might like to consider the impact having a steady stream of clients coming into your personal space may have. How you will manage the divide between the personal and work? You may also wish to consider some of the implications for the nature of the therapeutic relationship of having clients in your home and seeing aspects of your life they might not necessarily know about if you were renting premises.

In choosing rented accommodation versus home some of the things you might also like to take into consideration are ease of access to your planned location; for example the availability of public transport and parking, your contract with your landlord and if you situated in an area where people can afford to pay for private psychotherapy.
What areas of work will you provide? Will you specialise in a particular area or niche in your practice, some therapists focus on bereavement, or couples work. Have you a particular area of skill or interest, if you can offer something unique in your area, that may put your services in demand because of your specialist expertise.

What are you intending to charge for your services? What does the level at which you are pitching your pricing say about how you are valuing what you have to offer. It can be useful to see what other counsellors and therapists charging by including this in your research. A comparison with what others are charging can be useful and give you a sense of market value in your area. Being too expensive in comparison may deter people as well as being too cheap.
Marketing and how you will promote your business is another substantial question and one I will write more about in future articles.

Finally – insurances. You will need both public liability and professional indemnity insurance and if working from home check to see if your what house insurance policy says about working from home.