Intimate Affairs Conference
 Article 1 Subtitle

93 people registered for our Conference last month. We had 17 people presenting at the conference and participants coming from all over the UK and Eire. Evaluations and feedback were extremely positive.

For those that missed the conference, and also for those who came and are hungry for more... the good news is, that Pink Therapy was invited to programme the Sexual Minority Therapy strand for this year's BACP conference (see the specific item below), and this may mean the issues reach a much wider audience.

See below for more details of our input to the conference!

BACP Conference programme website... 

 Essentials in Sexual Minority Therapy
 Second Course - open for bookings

Our first four-day training course in the Essentials in Sexual Minority Therapy saw 12 students graduating, having completed all four days and a further four people attended three days and plan to make up the missing day in the future. We also had several people attending just for one of the four days.

The course was regarded extremely well by participants who were all highly motivated and engaged in a substantial amount of pre-course reading before some of the modules.

The details for the next course are on the website and anyone interested in booking is encouraged to apply early as the first course was full and places are limited.

Essentials: further information 

 Directory of Pink Therapists
 Time to Renew

Membership of the Directory of Pink Therapists is renewable annually every July. Members ought to have received a renewal reminder already via a separate email. However, this is just a reminder to ask you to attend to this, if you haven't yet done so.

Anyone else wanting to know more about joining the Directory can click on the link below to find the relevant information.

Information on Joining the Directory.... 

 Pink Therapy at BACP Conference
 Friday 6 October 2006

We were delighted to be invited to programme the Sexual Minority Therapy strand at this year's BACP conference. This is the first time BACP has had a major input on sexual minority therapy issues and we have programmed four really interesting events.

The day will begin with a seminar entitled Not in Front of the Students by Dominic Davies - exploring issues around the lack of training in sexual minority therapy issues and what can be done to address it. Next will be a lecture from Dr Helen Killaspy and Jo Semlyen of the Royal Free Hospital reporting on the evidence on Mental Health and Well Being of LGB people and how to improve it. Research that was commissioned by BACP. There will then be a closed workshop (open only to LGBT identified therapists) by Keith Silvester and Deirdre Haslam on Working with the Erotic Transference, and this will be followed by a seminar on Therapist Disclosure of Sexuality with Damian McCann and Cordelia Galgut.

The conference is also open to Non BACP members and is going to be held at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. To register your interest as a delegate, please email events@bacp.co.uk or call the events team on 0870 443 5229.

BACP Conference website... 

 Same Sex Domestic Violence
 Help Wanted

Alix Otten writes to us: "I am a consultee on a governemt inquiry into counselling and therapy for those affected by sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence. They have produced their report after the first stage of consultation and it includes the following sentence: 'There are currently no perpetrator programmes and associated services being run in the UK for same- sex domestic violence.'

"I wonder if this is accurate or whether anyone at pinktherapy knows otherwise. Would it be possible to put this question in the next newsletter and ask people to reply to me?"

Alix Otten 30 Kirkmanshulme Lane Manchester M12 4WA 0161 256 2201 Email: AlixOtten@supanet.com

 

 Professor Petruska Clarkson
 

Some of you will have already heard, but Petruska Clarkson died on the evening of Sunday 21st May 2006. Petruska was a founding member of Metanoia and helped make it a queer friendly space to train in, back in the 80's. The AHP Journal Self & Society are working on a special issue of memories and stories about her work.

To send your contributions... 

 PACE Trustee's wanted
 Can YOU help?

"PACE is London's leading provider of mental health and emotional wellbeing services to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Since 1985 we have provided a range of innovative services including counselling, groups and workshops, family support, youthwork, mental health advocacy and training.

PACE has an excellent and committed Board of Trustees to which we are currently looking to recruit new members. These positions are unpaid and entail a minimum commitment of approximately 2 hours per month to attend evening board meetings. We are particularly interested in hearing from people with experience in any of the following areas: legal, financial, voluntary sector management, therapy.

For an application pack please contact Robert Wisniewski at PACE, 34, Hartham Road, London, N7 9JL or email groupwork@pace.dircon.co.uk The deadline for applying is 13th July 2006.

 

 External Training Workshops
 

Cabby Laffy is running some Psychosexual Health SuperVision days - three one day workshops in London and St Albans for therapists on the following topics: Sexual Issues; Working with Couples; Erotic Transference.

Cabby assures us she challenges the medicalising and heterosexual models of traditional psychosexual work on her training workshops and around 50% of her clients are from sexual minorities. Further details contact Cabby Laffy directly on 020 7482 6371 or email: cabbylaffy@yahoo.co.uk

 

 BPS Lesbian and Gay Section Conference
 

Meg Barker sent us this: "We are thrilled to announce that the Lesbian and Gay Psychology Section will be holding a conference later this year on 1st and 2nd December. This is our first major conference in some years and we hope that many members of the section - as well as colleagues from other disciplines and from the psychotherapeutic, voluntary sector and activist communities - will be able to attend. Please put the date in your diaries now!

If you are interested in presenting a paper or poster or organising a symposium or round table discussion, do get in touch with Meg Barker: barkermj@lsbu.ac.uk or Darren Langdridge d.langdridge@open.ac.uk.

We will confirm details of keynote speakers and the registration process over the coming months. Registration fees will be £75 waged and £50 students or unwaged (including buffet lunch on the Saturday). The conference will take place at Doggett's Coat and Badge pub at London Blackfriars, overlooking the Thames, from the afternoon of Friday 1st December till the evening of Saturday 2nd. We hope there will be plenty of time for socialising as well as thought- provoking talks, discussions and workshops for postgraduate students. The conference is open to non BPS members

 

 New Therapy Group for Gay Men
 with Tim Foskett - Pink Therapy Clinical Associate

A three weekly therapy group on Thursday afternoons for gay and bisexual men is being offered in the Autumn by Tim Foskett. Tim has been running a similar group on a Wednesday evening for the past two and a half years and finds group therapy to be a tremendously helpful format: "a learning laboratory for relationships."

Further details from Tim Foskett email: timfoskett.therapy@virgin.net or call: 020 8292 0984

or check out Tim's website; 

 Farscape
 a new opportunity to network with others

Would you be interested in making different sorts of connections with other practitioners who work with sexual minority clients? Perhaps you are interested in creating a peer supervision group, an academic discussion group, networking for clients or maybe just a few drinks down at the pub with likeminded individuals. FARSCAPE is a newly created informal group that aims to meet these sorts of needs. We aim to meet a minimum of four times a year as a large group, though individuals are encouraged to head up their own activities, on their own initiative, in between.

We now have over thirty members, and two informal meet-ups are scheduled for July and September. This organisation will be what the members make it. The only requirement is that you work in a therapeutic manner with sexual minority clients, and are interested and enthusiastic about meeting up with others that do too. If you are interested, send an email to Robert Downes who is currently running the web-group through which we communicate. All events are listed on the web, and you can communicate to everyone in the network once you’ve joined. Interested? E-mail Robert Downs: rjdownes@onetel.com