The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, or BACP, is today's professional membership association for UK's counselors and psychotherapists, a branch of the Standing Conference for the Advancement of Counseling. Originally it included only counseling, but in September of 2000 it branched out to include psychotherapy with the BACP name change from the British Association for Counseling. It was here that the BACP Art Therapy came into effect on the psychotherapy level for accepted professionalism.
Art psychotherapy uses visual expression as a form of therapy that can effect the mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders of disturbed individuals of all ages, gender, and background. To apply for BACP membership for accreditation as a BACP art therapy professional, requires qualification from a BACP art therapy accredited training course in addition to a minimum of 450 hours of supervised practice. Mandatory is 450 hours with 150 of them must be subsequent to the training completion from three to six-years. Or alternatively, the individual can be awarded a admittance from a BACP accredited training course.
A certain amount of criteria must be met before an individual can become accepted through the BACP Art Therapy in the psychotherapy division, and this criteria is met by following certain things.
• The individual is a member of BACP, and will remain so for the accreditation period. Requirements must be met to maintain the accreditation.
• The individual is covered by professional indemnity insurance.
• The individual is in practice as a professional at the time of the application.
• Training and supervised practice is provided and followed.
BACP Art Therapy plays an active part in the Faculty for Healthcare Counsellors and Psychotherapists (FHCP), as a major subsidiary organization of the BACP. With close to 2,000 members, it is the largest membership organization that is entirely associated with healthcare counselors and psychotherapist. With similar goals, both BACP and FHCP promote and support the patient's choice of psychological therapy, along with accessible services. Their members are competent and efficient, while the organization trains and provides opportunities for their prospective counselors, such as art therapist, by providing training events and conferences.
Another division of the BACP is the Association for Independent Practitioners, or AIP, for those who are interested in the BACP Art Therapy membership but more on an independent level. Formerly the Personal Relationship Groupwork (PRG), it involves those who choose to work independently rather than within a professional group. In this region, there is more of an emphasis on clear boundaries, and provisions of support and supervision. Members from other groups and cultures are actively invited to join this group, as a part of their philosophic practices.
Art therapy in the schools involves professional art therapists along with preschoolers, children, adolescents, teachers, and families. The art therapist is specifically trained to recognize a struggling student's emotional issues that are preventing them from learning. Other things, such as learning disabilities or language/speech disorders, can also be evaluated along with behavioral disorders and mental illness.
The reason art therapy in the schools works so well is because very few children of any age can resist the art-making processes--a blank piece of paper, the smell of new crayons, the feel of clay, and the visual impact of the moving watercolors. The art therapist can take this artwork and diagnose problems from it, providing certain appropriate interventions that may be needed along with specific services to assist the child in his or her developmental learning.
Some of the advantages of art therapy in the schools are the provisions of visual and verbal approaches in order to address certain child needs. An assessment by the art therapist involves giving the child or adolescent five or six art assignments, using different media. The ideas behind this is to have the child or adolescent perceive their family, themselves, their school, their friends, or anything in their environment and then apply this perception to their artwork.
Once finished, the artwork is evaluated through the art therapist, head of the art therapy in the schools program. Also evaluated is the individual's academic history in connection with their development and family. Art therapists are trained to recognize cultural spectrums, using the artwork as an assessment evaluation in relation to the culture they are from.
Art therapy in the schools recognizes that all children's drawings are divided up into certain stages. An advantage, it is pretty easy to distinguish when a child is behind their age level. Autism is the only separate condition when the child will be ahead of their age level, which would be easily recognized by their artwork. Children with learning disabilities have advanced creative and visual intelligence for art, yet demonstrate lower scores on the standardized tests.
It is during this level of artworks and their diagnosis that the artwork of the child or adolescent will begin to show a certain amount of deviation, depending on the amount and type of internal conflict that is present. This will be represented through the drawing style and the individual's developmental level. One connecting example would be ADHD, where heavy coloring would represent the over-activity, yet appear small in some form of classroom setting.
The reason art therapy in the schools is important, is due to the safety levels held within the school systems for the child. Many do not have safe environments, or feel secure about themselves--school is their "other family" and the artwork is able to represent what that person is feeling inside.
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