At Talking Therapies UK, we are passionate about equipping professionals with the knowledge, confidence, and compassion to support mental health across diverse settings. With decades of combined experience in clinical practice, public health leadership, and service transformation, our training programmes are rooted in evidence-based approaches and real-world application.
We specialise in delivering high-impact, trauma-informed mental health training tailored to the needs of health, education, social care, and voluntary sector teams. From safeguarding and suicide prevention to emotional resilience and therapeutic communication, our courses are designed to empower practitioners at every level—whether you’re frontline staff, a strategic commissioner, or part of a multi-agency partnership.
Our facilitators bring many years clinical expertise , and a deep understanding of the social determinants of mental health. We prioritise co-production, reflective practice, and inclusive learning environments that foster curiosity, empathy, and professional growth.
Whether you’re looking to upskill your workforce, embed mental health into your organisational culture, or meet statutory training requirements, we offer flexible delivery formats including in-person workshops, webinars, and bespoke consultancy.
Together, we can build psychologically safe, responsive systems that promote wellbeing, reduce inequalities, and improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Let’s shape the future of mental health—one conversation, one training, one transformation at a time..
Power, culture and the reflecting team: postmodern practice, social GGRRAAACCEEESSS and systemic work under pressure.
Every therapeutic conversation happens inside larger systems of power, culture and profession, and advanced systemic practice refuses to pretend otherwise. This course works at that level: the postmodern and dialogical turns, the politics of the consulting room, and systemic work under statutory pressure, for experienced practitioners.
The first module engages power and culture directly. You will work with Burnham's Social GGRRAAACCEEESSS as a discipline for noticing which aspects of identity, gender, race, class, sexuality among them, are visible and voiced in the work and which are silently organising it. You will then study the reflecting team, therapy with the wall removed, and Open Dialogue's radical transparency. The second module takes systemic practice onto hard ground: high-conflict separations, families under statutory involvement where the referral is an instruction, and the therapist's own position inside the professional network, which so often mirrors the family's dynamics precisely.
Extended written lessons with key points and practice tasks at case and network level, with a study tutor throughout. Fourteen hours of CPD, around a year of access, a final assessment, and a personalised certificate on passing.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is an Advanced course in the systemic and family approaches pathway. It assumes that you already work with the approach at Practitioner level and want complexity, process and supervision-level thinking rather than the method itself, which is what Working Systemically teaches. What it adds is complex presentations, comorbidity, ruptures and impasses, the research and process literature, and the judgement needed to supervise or lead the work; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
A caution. Taking an Advanced course without the foundational understanding will make it harder to follow and to complete, and you will get less from it. If you are new to this approach, begin at Foundation; if you hold the foundations but have not yet used the approach with clients, begin with Working Systemically. Choose the level that matches your existing experience and knowledge.
The systemic and family approaches pathway. Systemic thinking from first principles, through working systemically with families and couples, to advanced systemic practice.
14 study hours14 CPD hours certified12 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Work systemically with complex, multi-agency and high-conflict systems
✓Use narrative and dialogical practices, including externalising and re-authoring conversations
✓Apply the social GRACES to power, difference and your own position in the room
✓Work reflexively with teams, including reflecting-team formats
✓Hold risk, safeguarding and child-focused practice within a systemic frame
✓Evaluate the systemic evidence base and argue its place alongside individual modalities
What you will study
Module 1: Part 1: The social GGRRAAACCEEESSS and power
Lessons 1 to 5 of the course.
The social GGRRAAACCEEESSS and powerGGRRAAACCEEESSS: the ever-present axes of difference and power
Reflecting teams and open dialogueReflecting team: tentative professional talk, family reflects on it
The Dialogical Turn: Co‑constructing Meaning through Conversational MappingConversational mapping visualises multiple voices, relational stances and cultural power structures in a single, co‑constructed artefact.
The Power of Language: Metaphor, Discourse and Cultural Scripts in Systemic DialogueMetaphors shape relational power and can be externalised to enable re‑authoring of family narratives.
The Reflecting Turn: The Third Position and the Dialogical ShiftThe reflecting turn requires epistemological humility, positioning the therapist as a learner rather than a judge of the family's reality.
Module 2: Part 2: Positioning and Counter-Positioning: Navigating Po
Lessons 6 to 10 of the course.
Positioning and Counter-Positioning: Navigating Power in the Dialogical FieldPositioning and counter-positioning are active, dialogical processes that shape identity, agency, and power within therapeutic encounters.
The Therapist as Subject: Reflexivity, Counter-Discourse, and the Ethics of Positionality in the Consultation RoomThe previous lessons in this module have established the structural and linguistic dimensions of power within systemic practice, ranging from the macro-level so…
Intersectionality and Cultural Humility in Systemic Dialogue: Managing Power Across Multiple IdentitiesIntersectionality reveals how multiple social identities intersect to shape unique experiences of power and oppression.
Epistemic Power and Knowledge Co‑construction in Systemic DialogueEpistemic power refers to the authority to define what counts as knowledge within therapeutic dialogue.
Temporal Power and Narrative Time in Systemic DialogueTemporal power refers to the influence exerted through the sequencing, pacing, and framing of narratives within therapy.
Module 3: Part 3: High-conflict and statutory work
Lessons 11 to 15 of the course.
High-conflict and statutory workSafeguarding outranks neutrality; multipartiality has limits
The self of the therapist in the wider systemThe therapist's family-of-origin resonances are working material
Risk assessment, safeguarding and systemic decision‑making in statutory contextsRisk is an emergent property of the whole professional‑family system, not solely an individual attribute.
Inter‑agency Collaboration and Systemic Boundaries in High‑Conflict Statutory WorkSystemic constellations reveal hidden organisational loyalties that shape inter‑agency decision‑making.
The Systemic Witness: Navigating the Therapist as Expert in Adversarial ContextsThe systemic therapist must manage the epistemological shift from constructing meaning to providing forensic evidence.
Module 4: Part 4: Systemic Formulation and Intervention Planning in
Lessons 16 to 19 of the course.
Systemic Formulation and Intervention Planning in High‑Conflic
