Advanced Observation Skills Infant Observation Children and Adolescents

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Assessment: a 5000-word mother/observation paper (100%)

This module will give you an understanding of emotional development in the first year of life and develop an observational attitude, enhancing listening and reflecting skills in clinical placements. You will learn about the principles of psychodynamic practice, clinical skills and techniques, and ethics of professional and clinical practice, with emphasis on safeguarding principles and liaising with the network.

indicative module Syllabus

• Linking and integrating observations of early emotional development to psychoanalytic theory
• Emotional foundations of healthy emotional development and introduction to early disturbances
• Observations in the workplace in order to learn how to take up the role of observer; how to understand interaction on both a conscious and unconscious level; application of this learning to the development of clinical skills
• Introduction to the basic professional principles of psychodynamic counselling (with reference to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy standards)

By the end of this module, you will:

• have developed a high capacity to understand psychoanalytic and psychodynamic principles to understand personality development
• understand the foundations for healthy emotional growth and the genesis of development disorders through disturbances in the early mother-infant relationship
• have skills in thinking psychodynamically about counselling/therapy issues
• have integrated knowledge gained with growing clinical experience
• have established an ongoing counselling relationship
• understand the specific contexts (familial and organisational) in which observations and counselling take place.