Trainees will develop the qualities and skills to engage in and sustain strong therapeutic relationships and work effectively with IAPT service users with depression.

This includes developing core psychotherapeutic counselling practitioner competencies and the integration of Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT), in line with the needs of service users, families and carers.

The training will also promote personal and professional development and self-awareness essential to successful psychotherapeutic counselling.

In the first year, trainees are expected to:

Study topics including initiating, maintaining, and developing the therapeutic relationship, the nature of depression and its impact on wellbeing, the range of counselling and psychotherapy modalities, safeguarding, and developing personal resilience.
Complete three non-credit bearing modules covering the fundamental principles and practice of psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapeutic counselling and an overview of the principles and practice of the IAPT modality (DIT) they will be training in.
Undertake a minimum of 30 hours of skills practice in assessment and therapy, before being assessed individually for readiness to work with service users.
Following sign off, trainees will undertake a minimum of 100 supervised client hours working with adults with mild to moderate depression in an IAPT service.
In the second year, trainees are expected to:

Build their knowledge and understanding of their chosen theoretical base and develop ways of working with simple and more complex presentations of human distress and depression.
Complete three 20 credit modules, aiming to extend and refine the application of psychotherapeutic counselling theories to gain a deeper understanding of the therapeutic process.
Continue the development of the skills required to provide a therapeutic service to service users with depression within IAPT services.
Gain critical knowledge and understanding of the theories and principles underpinning Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT).
Undertake a minimum of 150 supervised client hours working within the selected modality with service users with depression in an IAPT setting in line with the IAPT Manual.
In the third year, trainees are expected to:

Complete another three 20 credit modules to prepare to work as High Intensity Therapists working in IAPT services delivering Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT).
Complete the teaching and learning hours, required period of supervised clinical work, supervision requirements and assessment of competence in line with the national curriculum for Brief Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy. This will include a minimum of 200 supervised client hours, thereby achieving a minimum of 450 hours over the three years.