Many societies today honour the role that faith plays in our lives. People are however not sure how to draw on faith experiences and our relationship with God to use it in a practical way when helping people. Furthermore, many practices that people assume to be helpful can have a detrimental effect. Working with faith in helping relationships are influenced by many ways that people think about and practice their faith. We need to find respectful unassuming ways to work with faith that honours peoples' beliefs without putting them in boxes or to expect of them to believe in the way that we do as practitioners (counsellors, leaders, or anyone who is a believer).

This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series.

This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series.

Making meaning with children is about involving children in the means and the ends of what helps them heal, grow and be resilient. The course takes a holistic approach. It is presented by various lecturers. Some of the aspects include the legal framework to consider when working with children, working with what is known as 'the voice of the child' often used in mediation practices, engaging in playful ways to work with children as well as a spiritual pastoral perspective. The course is both a module of the advanced programme pastoral narrative therapy and then on rotating years incorporated into the continued development programme of Coram Deo.

This course deals with doing narrative therapy with children and is presented with Dr Elsabe Bosch Brits.

This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series.

Course description

This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series.

The course advances participants' understanding of the medical and psychological discourses one might encounter when doing pastoral and or narrative counselling. This is important for when working in a multidisciplinary environment, for referral, and in order to stay true to the paradigm of pastoral narrative therapy. 

Medical and psychological practices have historically been  informed by modernist clinical perspectives. The short course explores the interaction between pastoral narrative and clinical perspectives.

Medical and psychological practices have historically been  informed by modernist clinical perspectives. The short course explores the interaction between pastoral narrative and clinical perspectives. The topic for doing the aforementioned revolves, for the current year, around bulimia and anorexia.

Course description

This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series.

This course gives participants an overview of the main ideas informing a narrative approach as relevant in narrative therapy and community work. A narrative approach also has application beyond the context of counseling and can be used as, or, in some coaching genres, notably life coaching, or in facilitation and other helping relationships. But first, get familiar with it in its original context narrative therapy or counselling in order to understand its wider application.

The short course is built around the first 8 - 12 lectures of the Coram Deo Advanced Programme in Pastoral Narrative Therapy. Students who do this short course qualify for discount on the advanced programme either in the same year, or with new enrolment from September.  

Participants should be able to complete the online self-paced version of the course in 12 hours.

Short course outcomes in a narrative approach

• Learn how to make sense of the stories that surround us: our own, families, films, media, organisations, and society.
• How to unpack and question those stories that tear us down.
• How to build up the narratives that we want to live in and empower us to reach our full potential.
• Get a better perspective on what shapes our identity and develop our preferred way of being in the world.

This short course takes as foundational text the book of Alice Morgan. Lecturers use select aspects of the book and add to it from their own experience or other sources. Part One: What is narrative therapy? 1. Understanding our lives through stories 2. Stories in the therapeutic context 3. Externalising conversations: Naming the problem 4. Tracing the history of the problem 5. Exploring the effects of the problem 6. Situating the problem in context: Deconstruction 7. Discovering unique outcomes 8. Tracing the history and meaning of the unique outcome and naming an alternative story Part Two: Thickening the alternative story 9. Re-membering conversations 10. Therapeutic documentation 11. Therapeutic letters 12. Rituals and celebrations 13. Expanding the conversation 14. Outsider-witness groups and definitional ceremonies Participants will have to mark each lesson complete before being allowed to continue with the next lesson.

As an introduction to pastoral family therapy, this course introduces working with families as a context in therapy. It traces the theoretical development of the discipline over against other approaches and offers thoughts on what aspects of narrative practice are of particular importance when working with groups or families.

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This course is a CPD module in the Coram Deo CPD series. Key concepts: Intergrative organisational praxis (What it is, and a biblical grounding), Business units, Storying organisations (an evolutionary perspective), Congregational management and the pastoral role, Relational leading, Ongoing conversation about the role of pastoral and narrative therapy in said context.