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Patient/clients, whose first language is not English, are often doubly disadvantaged by their reliance on others to provide their voice and to mediate their communication. How can CBT therapists ensure that they are able to work effectively with appropriate spoken language interpreters in their practice? And what if a patient/client doesn’t need or want an interpreter?
The training session also considers how we can facilitate the exploration of clients’ (and therapists’) multilingual identities and heritages in therapeutic work.
The experiential day’s training covers the following:
• The multilingual therapeutic frame
• Working effectively with a spoken language interpreter face-to-face and online
• The triadic relationships, power, control, competition and collaboration
• Exclusion and our relationships with exclusion
• Maintaining clinical authority when you don’t understand the language(s) spoken in the room
• Processing of trauma in different languages
• The relational and embodied aspects of multilingualism
• Multilingualism as a therapeutic asset
• Managing the tensions between cultural sensitivity and safeguarding concerns
We will also consider how multilingual identities impact on emotional expression, memory recall and a sense of belonging. Why is it, for example, that children choose their friends based on whether or not they sound like them?
Drawing on research findings we will consider the issues of assumptions, loss, anxiety, agency, insider and outsider status, all from the multilingual perspective. Throughout the interactive workshop amalgamated case examples, films, scripts, as well as findings from research, will provide illustrations and promote discussion.
Please note that although there may be overlaps with working with a Sign Language Interpreter, this workshop focuses on spoken language interpreting. For those specifically interested in Sign Language interpreting the British Sign Language website is an excellent resource. Learning Outcomes • Participants will feel more confident and hopefully enthusiastic about working with spoken language interpreters
• Participants will be more aware of the therapeutic assets offered by their patients’ (and their own) multilingualism
After training as a psychodramatist, Dr Beverley Costa set up Mothertongue multi-ethnic counselling service (2000-2018) for multilingual clients. In 2009 she created a pool of mental health interpreters and in 2010 she established the national Bilingual Therapist and Mental Health Interpreter Forum and founded The Pásalo Project in 2017 to disseminate learning from Mothertongue. In 2013, Beverley established “Colleagues Across Borders” offering support to refugee psychosocial workers and interpreters based mainly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Beverley is a Senior Practitioner Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London and has written multiple papers and chapters. Beverley has produced a play about a couple in a cross-language relationship for the Soho Theatre, London. Her book Other Tongues - psychological therapies in a multilingual world was published in 2020. She created the online training resource on multilingualism and mental health, with funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in 2021/22.
Individual bookings and card payment only. Please email workshops@babcp.com for any queries
If you are a BABCP member, make sure you register and login as a member when booking so that you are charged the discounted member event fee