Online conference Part I

In my profession you are not finished learning when you receive your diploma. I would even state that the day you have your diploma in your hands is the day that your learning really start. Every day you learn about life from your clients. And you owe it to them to stay up to date about what is going on in the world and in the field of counselling and coaching.

Yesterday I had such an oppertunity. The good part, I did not even have to leave my house to do so. Thanks to onlinevents I was able to watch a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland online. It was called Insight, Impacts and Innovation Conference. It was organised by Simpson house an organisation based in Edinburgh. And the topics of the day was mostly working: with children with addicted parents, working with at risk children and working in a prison setting.


I have attended online conferences through onlinevents before and it is always excellent quality. On their webpage you can watch the conference and even better there is a chatscreen that let's you chat with othe online attendee's. The great team keep an eye on the chat room and will pose your questions to the lecturers in the venue. It is really worth giving it a try.


I will make a start with giving you my impressions of the conference, which I will continue next week.


The morning part started with a talk on the importance of attachment. It is something we all remember from our training and yet we don't use it enough. When children and young people show agressive behaviour it is so important to understand were they are coming from, where the anxiety come from. Did they ever have a secure base at home? Do they feel secure and safe now? Giving them that feeling of safety is a basis to really start work. She also stressed the need for art and music therapy, areas that suffer so heavily from the recent government cutbacks.


The next brief talk was on outcomes of a study on if counselling is succesfull for addicted people. The outcomes were amazing. Almost all of those in the trial had not believed counselling would help at the outset, and most had changed their mind and found it very useful in the end. What was mostly mentioned was that it helped them feel less isolated and helped them relearn social skills. it also gave them more insight on why they used drugs.


The next pat consisted of 3 short case studies and a talk about working in the prison system. This section could have been a bit longer. The ten minutes talks were too short to really do the speakers justice I thought. But still it was very impressive. Especially the case study of "Jake" a prisoner. It showed him as a person with feelings and fears and not an outcast in a prison.

The last part of the morning was a talk by Kate Anthony on social media & technology. As always this was very informative and offered a lot of information for those who are not used to working online. She is always an advocate on working ethically online and stressing the importance of training when working online. [Training online is offered for example by the online therapy instute and online training for counsellors.]



I will cover the afternoon part of the day next week.




Some websites for you to look at:
http://www.simpson-house.org/sunflowergarden.htm
http://www.mihedinburgh.org/welcome.htm 
http://www.simpson-house.org/home.htm
http://www.onlinevents.co.uk/
http://www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/
http://www.onlinetrainingforcounsellors.co.uk/