糖心官网

Our EDI mentoring programme aims to support counselling and psychotherapy students and trainees from diverse, marginalised and underrepresented communities - including people with disabilities, neurodivergence, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual,鈥�+ which represents all other sexual orientations and gender identities [LGBTQIA+] and people from less privileged social economic backgrounds.

The mentoring听programme听aims to provide:鈥�听

• knowledge and expertise in delivering听equitable therapies to clients from diverse, marginalised, and underrepresented backgrounds听

• explore听your own听personal identities when providing therapy as someone from a diverse, marginalised, or underrepresented community听

• understand anti-oppressive practice听in counselling听听

The听programme听is designed as part of our strategy to improve EDI in the counselling professions and is part of our work to support, promote,听and encourage a diverse and inclusive profession.

What is EDI听mentoring?

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) mentoring is a mentoring approach that aims to ensure students have access to learning, opportunities, and support on EDI. It goes beyond traditional mentoring by recognising that people's experiences can be shaped by factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic background, and other aspects of identity.

We want to support this training by opening a conversation on how we consider, plan for and put into practice EDI in counselling therapy. EDI mentoring is based on the professional relationship between an experienced 糖心官网 members and听 students in training, who are able to discuss, challenge and support students on their EDI learning journey.

This developmental dialogue and confidential partnership between two people is based on understanding and trust. It鈥檚 a process of support and development, helping mentees tackle issues and achieve their goals. The partnership is driven primarily by the mentee, but it鈥檚 a two-way learning relationship where the mentor can learn from the relationship as well.鈥�听

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The reason for the mentoring programme

Feedback from our members showed that听some听training received by members is not inclusive听or proactively considers听EDI. There are wide-ranging reasons for this, including:鈥�听

• EDI is insufficiently embedded within the curriculum with a low uptake of minority therapists becoming trainers听

• counselling and psychotherapy theories that have influenced training are predominately written by white, heterosexual males so are not relevant for all circumstances听

• training is Eurocentric¹

• many diverse religious beliefs and values are insufficiently integrated into the curriculum听

Too often, responsibility falls on students to share their EDI lived experiences in the learning environment. We want to offer current trainees support in their learning and development, while they train to become qualified therapists.