We're delighted to launch the UK's first in-work psychotherapy development programme aiming to create a generation of counsellors who combine relevant lived experience with the highest levels of professional qualifications.

Through our Therapeutic Practitioners programme, we will be training a new generation of culturally competent practitioners to gain the post-graduate qualifications they need to deliver transformational, early intervention mental health support to vulnerable adolescents at secondary schools across the UK.

Access to therapeutic training is prohibitively expensive for people from working class backgrounds. This has created an enormous class and ethnic gap between the young people most in need of expert mental health support and the counsellors and psychotherapists who are available to support them. This demographic void has dramatic real world impacts with, for example, young black males being the least likely to access support for mental health conditions, despite being overrepresented in school exclusion figures.

Our Therapeutic Practitioner programme aims to change this through providing talented and passionate individuals from working class and minority ethnic backgrounds with the opportunity to train as they work. Alongside completing their therapeutic qualifications with the Institute of Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE) and the University of East London (UEL), the successful applicants will also be provided with personal therapy, weekly group reflective practice, and fortnightly clinical supervision across the three year programme. Additionally, successful applicants will be joining a supportive network of individuals with similar experiences to them and a shared passion for creating transformational relationships with adolescents who are at risk of exclusion.

We know that early access to high quality counselling is vital to supporting young people to recover from trauma. This development programme is all about ensuring our most vulnerable adolescents have people in their lives with both the expertise and the lived experience to provide them with the therapeutic support they need at the earliest possible opportunity.