Relationships Matter - PG Certificate Systemic Practice and Family Therapy

Below is information about the PG Certificate Systemic Practice and Family Therapy, the entrance programme for all systemic training at Queen’s.

PG Certificate – enhancing your everyday practice: This training helps practitioners in different settings and roles to understand the core concepts of contemporary systemic practice and use basic systemic skills and techniques to maximise the therapeutic benefit for individual service users or relationship groups in their everyday work.

The basics: This is a multi-disciplinary programme suitable for people working with individuals or family groups in a wide range of contexts – both adult services and children and families in voluntary and statutory sectors – child welfare, social care, mental health, physical health and disability, elderly, adult safeguarding and justice.

It entails 15 taught days (October-April); three modules and three written assessments. All courses are accredited by Queen’s, the Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice UK (AFT) and the Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC).

Applying for the course:

The course portal is now open. Two employment references are recommended. Note: At least one of your referees should be your line manager.

Professional in Practice (PiP) awards for social workers:

Successful programme completion satisfies five requirements of the Specialist Award in Social Work.

Information videos – hearing from colleagues who have completed the course:

We have a range of short video resources to showcase the impact this one-year part-time course can have on your practice. Listen to: Matthew

Montgomery, Intensive Family Support, Northern HSC Trust

Tara Murphy, Adoption Services, Southern HSC Trust

Do you work in children’s social care?

Why not listen to the Northern Ireland Social Care Council’s lunchtime webinar about the benefits of systemic training in child and family social work – Voices from child & family social work: What difference does a systemic approach make?

Following a short overview of systemic practice principles and the evidence base, you can hear directly from practitioners about the benefits of different levels of systemic training in varied child and family social work settings. The following 10 minute excerpts are available:

Megan Quinn, Gateway, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust – listen to Megan speaking about her work conducting initial assessments in the context of domestic violence concerns in the BHSCT Gateway team
Tara Murphy, Adoption Services, Southern HSC Trust – listen to Tara about how she is using systemic skills to work with child to parent aggression and birth parent contact
Karen Bowd, Residential Childcare, South Eastern HSC Trust – listen to Karen explore the multiple small opportunities for therapeutic engagement with children in residential settings, considerations regarding behavioural management and the importance of reflective practice spaces in the work environment.

What recent students said:

I loved the course and learning. Really benefitted from the role plays…tutors were very professional and knowledgeable

The Practice Application Groups really stretched and enriched my learning.

The training was much more dynamic than expected… thought-provoking, very relevant to my role. Course content was very rich

Other levels of systemic training: You can find out more information about Postgraduate Diploma Systemic Practice (Year 2 – AFT Intermediate level training) here – and MSc Systemic Psychotherapy (Years 3 and 4 – AFT qualifying level training) here.

Further information: Please feel free to share this information and get in touch if you have any queries. We are more than happy to answer any questions.

Suzanne Mooney, PhD
Systemic Practice & Family Therapy Programme Director | Senior Lecturer in Social Work School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast s.mooney@qub.ac.uk