NHS Practice Placements.
What can art, drama and music therapies trainees contribute to your service?
It's been the most rewarding therapy that I've ever had in my life. This has done me the world of good.
I think art therapy is wonderful. I mean it helped me and I didn't think I could ever be helped.
Our service users are always telling us how beneficial they find the arts therapies, whether that's art, music or drama therapy. Unfortunately there aren't enough placements for arts therapists within the NHS. The reason for this may be that people don't realise they could have an arts therapist on placement, or it may be they think they need to have an arts therapist already in post to have a trainee. This is not always the case. We'd really like to encourage more NHS trusts and their partnerships to consider having an arts therapy trainee on placement. Think about what they could offer your service, your service users and your teams.
I think the arts therapies are an absolutely vital part of mental health services. For many people, talking about things in a direct way is not possible. So what the arts therapies offer is a way to approach difficult material indirectly.
The arts can all be nonverbal mediums, so they can all allow for expression of really sometimes quite difficult things which really need to be expressed in a more accessible way.
Quite often when someone's doing something else, they sometimes open up a bit more like anything they're doing with their hands and they will just talk. So if you're just sitting there, it's all about just they're talking. And some people just don't really like to open up like that.
It brings the emotions out, it brings the feelings out and you can almost be more honest in the art than you can verbalising it.
I'm working with the guy at the moment who's not got much experience of making music or even liking the music that much, but he's really opened up and become a lot more confident. We've only had a few sessions together and he's already writing songs and writing lyrics about stuff that he cares about and he's being able to show an emotional sight to himself through music. And it happened really quickly as well.
I got the opportunity to work with a lady who had a lot of language barrier. Even the concept of therapy was difficult for this person to understand because of cultural differences and here was an opportunity to transcend language. So I believe it provides access to therapy from a very different point of view.
The placement that I'm currently on is very different from what I expected. Working in forensics has been a real eye opener and is a huge learning experience for me. There's lots of training and an understanding of the organisation and the institution within which I'm working, but also just appreciating what the multidisciplinary team does, what each of their roles are, where I fit in into all of that, and of course how we all collaborate to work with the service users.
Working with the multidisciplinary team is a huge benefit as a trainee because you are able to learn about how people from different modalities approach mental health.
As an art therapist, maybe sometimes we see things from one angle, but it may not be the same for speech and language therapists, occupational therapists. It is because we are working together and we are mapping things together. That can give us a more holistic bill when we look at our service user situation.
It was quite a delight to see that there is a quite diverse team when it comes to the arts therapies in the NHS. But I still feel like there's a long way to go. I feel like it's really important for the service users to see that the team that is actually taking care of them is as diverse as they are.
I have seen first hand the benefits that service users have had recognising arts therapists that may look like them or that might have a similar or the same cultural background. So to have a culturally diverse team couldn't be more important.
You just really benefit the service users far better when you're able to bring different people from different backgrounds and different professionals from different backgrounds together.
I think as trainees would get really excited on placement and bring in that new energy and that creative inspiration if you will. And I think that's something that that I felt like that I brought into the team.
The trainees are amazing. They come in with this like fresh energy and willingness to learn and they can trial new things. So actually with bringing that trainee in, more young people are able to access art therapy that may not have been able to access that before. Sometimes supervisors could be a bit nervous I think with the workload as well because you do need to support the trainee when they come to placement with you. But actually if you provide them with that scaffolding and that initial support, they hit the ground running. So really they can give you so much more and give the organisation and the team so much more than what you think you would have to put in yourself.
The NHS placements are extremely important for the service users as well as the trainees. It provides the trainees with an understanding of how this functions in the real world.
On placement I get to go to work and I am a part of a team and I am working from 9 to 5. Serious business. And that's really exciting because it has allowed me to put what I am learning into practise. It's the best way to learn. Really it is the best way to learn about what we're doing, how we're doing it, why we're doing it. It's such an enriching learning experience on so many levels.
You learn to be assertive and reflective and passionate about what you're doing. It's a rigorous experience, the NHS placement, but it's absolutely crucial for building the full skillset an arts therapist needs to practise almost anywhere.
This experience of placement has really set me up for when I'm going to be professionally qualified, and I'm pretty confident that because of the training I've had here, I'm going to be alright. So if you'd like to find out more, please see the information on screen for contact details and how to get started. Please email the Art, Drama or Music Therapies Professional Bodies to request a list of trainings and contacts for placement coordinators.
British Association of Art Therapies info@baat.org www.baat.org
British Association of Dramatherapists franfleming@badth.org.uk www.badth.org.uk
British Association for Music Therapy info@bamt.org www.bamt.org
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