blue smile training
Passionate about training
Blue Smile is passionate about supporting the development of clinical trainees and qualified practitioners so they can continuously improve the skills needed to work effectively with children, schools and families.
We draw on our own expertise in children and young people’s mental health as well as that of external trainers to provide high quality, regular clinical training workshops throughout the year.
Our full and half day ‘Skills in the Room’ workshops combine theoretical and experiential learning, incorporate the use of arts and play and are open to practitioners from various organisations as well as those within Blue Smile.
Our training workshops cover a wide range of topics including:
• Using mindfulness with children
• Understanding and working with self-harm
• Working with ADHD
• Sand tray work
• Bereavement and loss
‘Excellent training! A good mix of practical with discussions and amazingly generous experience shared with the group’
Blue Smile Training Attendee
Past speakers
• Lynne Souter Anderson – Working with clay
• Katie Edwards & Juliet Snell – Self harm research and practice
• Priscilla Bacon – Offering Groups for Parents
• Ditty Dokter – Negotiating Boundaries or Reinforcing Borders?
• Clair Lewoski – Gender, Sexuality and Gender Questioning
• Clair Lewoski – Mindfulness
• Anna Zeffertt – Working with Ill Health
• Biddy Barclay – Tiny and Vast: Worlds in the Sand-tray
• Amy O’Leary – Understanding and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse
• Dr Joanne Holmes – Working with ADHD
• Clair Lewoski – Working with Defences
• Raven Kaliana – Puppets do the Talking: Transforming Trauma with Puppetry
• Dr Gina Gomez de la Cuesta – Building Bricks for Autism: An introduction to Lego based Therapy
• Vince Hesketh – We are not Alone: Working with Family Systems
‘blue smile cares about developing its staff and volunteers and provides opportunities for high quality training’
Blue Smile Training Attendee
blue smile conferences
Blue Smile has previously held two expert conferences and both were hugely successful.
Well over 100 attendees came each time from schools and statutory bodies, alongside therapists and supporters of our charity.
An active participation scheme allowed the audience to submit questions on their phones as these came up and to vote on their views on questions from the speakers. We were able to show the information immediately in pie charts, so it was truly engaging and intimate.
Key to the success of these events was the expertise of our speakers, and many commented on how much they valued having up to the minute knowledge and data about mental health in high interest areas such as Special Educational Needs, Attachment in the Classroom, the Impact of Social Media and Self-Harm.
‘You inspired and educated me. I feel incredibly passionate about mental health and wellbeing’
Blue Smile Training Attendee
Inspiring and motivating
At our first conference, “How To Respond To The Mental Health Crisis in Schools” Alistair Campbell shared his own moving story about his mental health and how concerned he was that unless funding followed the fine words from Government on raising awareness of mental health issues, then we were heading for trouble.
We had great talks from our Patron, Proffesor Simon Baron-Cohen, on autism and from Dr Carol Holliday from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education on the evidence base for counselling in schools. Dr Dickon Bevington from the Anna Freud Centre gave us an amazing overview of self-harm and why it’s increasing.
Angela Leach, then Headteacher at Shirley Community Primary School, explained why being a Blue Smile Partner School had such a huge impact on pupils.
At our 2019 conference, The Resilient School, a Whole School Approach, our brilliant speaker Heather Geddes spoke about increasing attachment in classrooms, which had the many schools and therapists scribbling notes in excitement.
We were really honoured because this was probably Heather’s last big speaking engagement before semi-retiring. She was truly inspiring as an educational psychologist working with young people in trouble for so many years.