Programme requirements

By the completion of the programme students will have met the following requirements:

· Formal Teaching: usually 140 hours per year, and a total of 602 hours over five years to examination. This includes two tutorials per year.

· Personal face to face psychotherapy with a UKCP registered psychotherapist for the duration of training is a requirement. This will be of the duration, intensity and frequency of the psychotherapy offered to clients and compatible with the Metanoia Institute’s Gestalt training programme. This needs to be a minimum of 40 sessions per year, over at least four years of the programme. Ongoing psychotherapy is considered ethical and responsible as well as providing a primary avenue of learning, 'the inner map,' which we believe psychotherapists require in order to move into deep psychotherapy with clients. Please note that the cost for psychotherapy is not included in the course fees and needs to be funded separately by the student.

· Supervised client contact: students can only enter the Clinical Practice year when they are considered ready to see clients by their primary tutor. The level of experience of the individual student will mediate the number of clients seen at each stage of their development as clinicians. However, on entering the Clinical Practice year students need to be seeing at least two clients per week. By the completion of training, the student will have undertaken a minimum of 450 hours of client work supervised by their primary Gestalt supervisor.

· Supervision: regular supervision, once you begin to work with clients, is an integral part of the Gestalt Psychotherapy training. Supervision is required throughout the training at a minimum ratio of one hour of supervision to every four client hours rising to 1:6 once students have accrued at least 150 hours of clinical practice. Regardless of hours or experience all students need to attend fortnightly supervision. All students need to arrange supervision with a Metanoia Institute approved primary supervisor, in consultation with their primary course tutor. At the point of final oral examination, students need to have accrued 150 hours of supervision. Please note that the cost for Gestalt supervision is not included in the course fees and needs to be funded separately by the student. Sometimes the placement where the student gains their client hours provides free supervision. This non-Gestalt supervision can count for up to 50 hours of the 150 total requirement.

· Additional 120 hours of Mental Health Learning. UKCP require all psychotherapy students (unless they have substantial previous experience of mental health systems and settings) to undertake additional training to ensure that they have first-hand experience of the thinking and clinical methods used in the psychiatric profession and the main mental health delivery systems in Britain. Full details of the intended learning outcomes (required by UKCP), and the portfolio needed to evidence the meeting of these learning outcomes, can be found on our internal VLE system. The total duration of the additional mental health training should not be less than 120 hours. At least 14 of these hours (though we recommend more) must involve direct experience with service providers and users of mental health services. Please note that some organisations charge a cost for this and in these cases, this needs to be funded separately by the student.

· Written work: written assignments must be submitted and passed throughout the training in line with the requirements in the handbook. These will count in each case towards the end- of-year assessment. Finally, in order to qualify as a Gestalt psychotherapist, a written and oral examination is taken.

There is regular feedback throughout the. training programme. Each student is also required to keep a record of all results, tutorials, etc. There is open communication between the institute’s tutors, supervisors and placement coordinators who work together as a team to enable students to get the most benefit from the training and professional development structures.