our cOLLECTIVE

working

Values

How we want to show up

  • Compassion

    working with empathy and respect for our clients and ourselves.

  • Courage

    finding the courage to challenge ourselves and others in growthful ways.

  • Humility

    recognising and addressing our own limits, needs, blindspots, and biases.

Compassion

Grounding our work with clients and with each other in compassion.

Recognising the fundamental role compassion plays in therapeutic work, and the transformative power of being in genuine and deep relationship with another human being holding compassion for you.

Striving for a thoughtful and authentic compassion that is rooted in empathy, acceptance, and respect for client autonomy and difference.

Acknowledging unapologetically the vital importance of self-compassion in sustaining our professional lives.

Designing collective working practices that allow us to address and meet our own needs as practitioners compassionately.

Courage 

Recognising courage as essential for learning, growth, and change.

Honouring, mirroring, and modelling the courage our clients show in engaging with therapy, by meeting them with authenticity and curiosity.

Cultivating curiosity about the parts of ourselves, our clients, and our work that scare us.

Taking the risk to show up authentically and transparently in our personal practice and collective work  - taking ownership of our values, choices and voice, and allowing ourselves to be seen. 

Making space for rupture as well as repair in our therapeutic work, in our collaboration with each other, and in the way we engage with the broader therapy field. 

Finding the courage to be uncomfortable and, where necessary, disruptive - to challenge self, clients, each other, and broader structures within the therapy field.

Humility

Cultivating humility, understood as a growth-oriented commitment to recognising and engaging deeply and transparently with our own finiteness and unknowing, as people and practitioners.

Acknowledging and addressing limits of competence and expertise through ongoing self-challenging processes of reflection and professional development.

Recognising and respecting our own needs, boundaries, and vulnerabilities. Designing our collective practice to pragmatically and responsibly reflect, rather than override our own needs.

Acknowledging the complexities and inequities of personal, relational, and structural power; and consciously addressing how these play out in our work together, in the therapy room, and in the role of therapist we inhabit.

Prioritising client agency over therapist authority.

Listening responsively to and learning from our clients, and from the lived experience and work of marginalised groups. 

Engaging with a genuine openness to being transformed by contact with clients and each other.

What we want to work towards

  • Competence

    continually learning and improving the quality and effectiveness of our practice.

  • Transformation

    facilitating meaningful and enduring change through our therapeutic work.

  • SUSTAINABILITY

    finding ways of working that sustain and nourish us long-term.

Competence

Resisting complacency.

Continually learning with, for, and from our clients to improve the quality of our practice.

Drawing on relevant theory; emerging research and best practice; practical, personal and relational experience; and client knowledge -  in open, rigorous, reflective, and critical ways - to better understand and meet the needs of our clients.

Extending our capacity to work flexibly, creatively, and effectively with a broad range of clients - including those who have traditionally been more marginalised, under-served, and under-seen in mainstream therapeutic practice.

Transformation

Believing in the capacity of human beings and human structures to grow and change in meaningful and self-directed ways.

Supporting clients in exploring and developing new ways of relating, living and taking care of themselves that allow them to move towards their own version of thriving. 

Drawing on each other's individual areas of specialism, expertise, and lived experience to learn and grow as practitioners together, through clinical discussion and skills-sharing.

Making space for a depth of connection with our clients that changes us as well as them.

Modelling through our collective working practices, the changes we would like to see in the therapy industry.

Sustainability

Developing a model of collective working that takes seriously our needs as practitioners, and ensures the work we do is sufficiently resourced and sustainable. 

Structuring our collective working in ways that respect the therapists' expertise, time and quality of life; and facilitate both self-care and collective care.

Resisting and challenging current norms of working in the therapy field that exploit therapists and increase risk of burnout, vicarious trauma, and unsustainable stress; and as such compromise quality and consistency of care for clients.

Supporting one another as a collective through the more complex and challenging parts of therapeutic practice, to ensure professional resilience.

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