Catch up ceremonies for pandemic graduates
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust's (GMMH) Psychological Therapies Training Centre (PTTC) has been delighted to be able to host ‘catch up’ graduation ceremonies for the students that completed their training during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The PTTC has, since 2000, offered high quality training in evidence-based psychological therapies, in collaboration with the University of Manchester, who validate most of the programmes. The centre been awarded a number of NHS England (NHSE) contracts regionally and nationally, to deliver training in an increasingly broad range of evidence-based psychological therapies (including CBT for a range of different problems and client groups, Parent Training, Systemic Family Practice, Interpersonal Therapy), and also supervision and service leadership training related to delivery of those therapies.
Freda McManus, Head of The Psychological Therapies Training Centre, said:
"We are very unusual in that there is only one other NHS Trust we know of nationally which has such a substantial psychological therapies training profile – the vast majority of this kind of training is delivered within universities. GMMH’s support for training has enabled the PTTC to develop and sustain an excellent national reputation in psychological therapies training.
“Our students come from all over the region, and sometimes further afield, both from the NHS, and other public sector and voluntary services. Our courses are highly demanding and require a great deal of them. In addition, they are all adult learners, who have the usual complicated set of demands and responsibilities in their lives, so are having to juggle these, their usual jobs, and our requirements over a sustained period. This was even more challenging during the pandemic. The fact that people have reached the point of graduation reflects a high level of sacrifice and commitment, and we are very proud of them all.
“For us, our passion is to help people develop the skills that enable them to deliver the highest quality therapies to service users of all ages. We have an amazing group of committed, talented and highly skilled staff working on these programmes, many of them employed / seconded for one or two days a week, so they, too, are ‘juggling’ demands in order to deliver the training programmes. We are very proud of them all.
“The graduation ceremonies give us an opportunity to acknowledge the work that our students have done, and how much they have achieved in completing our programmes successfully and highlight the likely future benefit for service users and their families and carers.”
