The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT)

The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) was founded in 1981 by Dr William Davies and Derek Perkins, two clinical psychologists based in Birmingham, England. It is now a limited company, registered in London, with its head office in Thurnby. APT's express purpose is to provide the best training possible to 'the helping professions': psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, etc.

Over 150,000 professionals have attended APT training, mainly from the UK National Health and Social Services, and independent healthcare providers. The APT has been awarded the Investors in People Gold Level, shortlisted for the Learning and Performance Institute's Learning Provider of the Year Award 2019, and our Chief Executive (Dr William Davies) was shortlisted for the IiP Leader of the Year Award 2020.

APT, The Dower House, Thurnby

The Association for Psychological Therapies HQ, The Dower House, Thurnby, Leicestershire.

APT employs over 100 highly experienced clinical and educational psychologists on a consultancy basis, with about a third being regularly employed. All these tutors are senior clinicians (mostly consultant psychologists) mostly employed in the UK, Ireland, or Canada. Their area of expertise is in mental health and related fields. We pride ourselves on providing the most interesting, and relevant training, on courses ranging from 1 to 34 days. Our specialist areas are:

The training is provided predominantly 'OnSite', meaning 'at the premises of the sponsor'. The sponsor provides the teaching room, participants and any refreshments, we provide everything else. That way a 'critical mass' of staff receives training in a given subject so they can support each other subsequently.

A development since 2007 has been the provision of many of the live courses 'online'. Because many of our live courses use video footage, this element transfers to online training very easily and enables students to watch demonstration videos until they feel confident of being able to replicate what they see.

We have a number of 'noted' courses, especially:

The way we maintain quality is by spending a lot of time developing and maintaining the course content, and then recruiting talented professionals to deliver it. In turn they feed in to the development process which results in continuously maintained quality. We check this by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation-quality from every course delegate. The information so obtained is shared with the course sponsor. Moreover we write to attenders four months after the training to check on its usefulness.

In summary, our concern is to make training just as relevant and interesting as we can, with the aim of benefitting both those who attend the training and also the end user, the patient. A recent development since 2008 has been to introduce MoodMaster, a sister company whose focus is to provide prepared programmes for professionals to deliver relevant material direct to patients who require it.

The following are the principles which guide us:

We produce the best training we can

Just that.

We are easy to work with, reliable and generous

For example: we don't 'hold you to things' - if your needs change then so do ours. We never want you to have training that you don't want. We always do what we say we'll do, when we say we'll do it. If course delegates ask things over and above the topic of the course, the tutor will answer if they can.

Respect

Across-the-board respect is built into all APT courses at the course-design stage and we believe this is the best way of respecting diversity. In addition, APT tutors have the deep-seated attitudes that are congruent with this policy.

The Environment

Wherever possible (virtually always) we use paper from sustainable resources, i.e. from forests continuously grown for paper manufacture. This is important because all course delegates receive extensive workbooks and these consume hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper annually.

Course subjects

APT courses are chosen to be beneficial to (a) the course delegates and (b) those they work with, and we are totally committed to each of the course titles we offer. Some titles are therefore 'fashionable' and some much less so. In either case our commitment is total.

Tutors

To be an APT tutor is a significant accolade. Tutors are selected by reference to a range of ten different criteria, each individually rated by two independent referees. To maintain one's status as a tutor, one has to sustain very high (specified) ratings on the two key variables of presentation quality and relevance to course delegates.

Course development

Every tutor on every course gives written feedback to APT on how the course was received and whether there could be any improvement in terms of content or balance of the course. These are constantly monitored and assimilated to develop courses to the highest level possible.

Course Evaluation

The two most important factors are (a) presentation-quality and (b) relevance, so we ask every delegate to rate the course on both these dimensions, and every APT course has an average rating of 6.x out of 7 on both scales. These are very high ratings. After a course, the sponsor receives a feedback document which contains the feedback from delegates and from the tutor.

Evidence based and relevant

APT targets the approaches that published evidence suggests are likely to be the most effective. We then put together courses that combine theory and practice in a way that is easy to grasp and easy to apply safely. Finally we employ experienced and talented people to deliver the courses and add their unique input.

Morale-boosting

Because the real cost of training is the cost of having staff away from their day-to-day work, we aim for our training to be not only relevant but presented in a way that holds the attention and boosts the enthusiasm and self-esteem of attenders.

Value for money

We believe that our courses should offer proper value for money, so they should be priced at a level where we can spend time developing the course content, employ good people to deliver the courses, and sustain our own organisation for the future: no more and no less.

Integrated, evidence based training

Courses provided by APT mesh with one another. Hence you acquire a genuine development of expertise, rather than an unhelpful acquisition of competing ideas.

Mental Health at Work: Our Pledge.

APT’s own pledge to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace; this is what we aspire to and believe we achieve. We hope that you too may wish to aspire to it.

View pledge

Onsite Courses.

The majority of our mental health training courses are provided this way - we come to you and train a group of up to 15 people for an all-inclusive fee.

View courses