MASTER of CLINICAL FAMILY THERAPY
Family therapy is an umbrella term that covers a range of methods, theories and practice styles in working with families. It is a specialist area of psychotherapy and counselling. Training in family therapy is usually pursued by members of the health and welfare professions following completion of their undergraduate degree and after working for several years in the field. Family Therapy developed in the mid 20th century and gained momentum and recognition during the 1960s and 1970s. There are many schools of family therapy in existence today. The Bouverie Centre has a tradition of offering integrative family therapy training specifically from a systems and cybernetic framework and also includes the teaching of narrative, feminist, social constructionist and other post-modern ideas. It is our belief that students will select for themselves from an integrative approach the framework that best suits their style and work context.
The Bouverie Centre developed from a child psychiatric clinic to the first family therapy centre in Australia in the mid 1970s. This major change was inspired by Dr. Geoff Goding the Superintendent at the time. Geoff had taken part in a workshop run by Walter Kempler, a Gestalt Family Therapist. Bouverie had already started to become family focussed when a small dedicated group of Social Workers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists made a concerted effort to understand and work from a framework that would privilege working with the whole family. To this end Salvador Minuchin was invited to Melbourne in 1976. The focus shifted from individual work with children to a family focussed approach to helping children and adults with difficulties. At this time, the Centre began to offer 2 year training courses for professionals in the area of family therapy. The course was supported by the State Government and formally became the Mental Health Division Training Programme in Family Therapy in 1981.
In 1989, The Bouverie Centre (then Bouverie Family Therapy Centre) became the first organisation in the Southern Hemisphere to offer a university qualification in the area of family therapy. A Postgraduate Diploma of Family Therapy was developed and offered in conjunction with the School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University. Tom Paterson was appointed as the first Senior Lecturer and was the primary architect of the early Graduate Diploma and Master of Family Therapy courses. In 1996, The Bouverie Centre was required to move from the State public sector as part of a ‘mainstreaming’ policy. The Faculty of Health Sciences La Trobe University won the competitive tendering process and Bouverie became the only clinical ‘Centre’ within the Faculty.
The one year Graduate Certificate course was introduced in 1998 to offer training to health and welfare professionals who may choose not to train primarily as family therapists but wish to have an understanding of the area of family work. This was in response to the recognition of the many workers who have contact with a wide range of clients and wider systems networks. In 2004 the Postgraduate Diploma in Family Therapy was upgraded to a Master of Clinical Family Therapy. In addition to this, in 2005 a Master of Couple and Relationship Counselling was offered for the first time in equal partnership with Relationships Australia. The courses now offered include: Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy; Graduate Certificate in Narrative Therapy; Master of Clinical Family Therapy; Master of Couple & Relationship Counselling (by coursework or research); Doctorate in Clinical Sciences (family therapy); and PhD (in family therapy).
In 1998 Amaryll Perlesz was appointed as Senior Lecturer and Anne Welfare and Banu Moloney were appointed as lecturers to create a formal academic unit. The current academic team consists of Amaryll Perlesz, Robyn Elliott, Banu Moloney, Anne Welfare. In 2005 Amaryll Perlesz was appointed Associate Professor in Family Therapy and is providing leadership, development and teaching in family therapy research. Robyn Elliott, as Academic Program Manager, coordinates the Master of Clinical Family Therapy. Anne Welfare coordinates the Master of Couple and Relationships Counselling program. Colleen Cousins coordinates the Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy, while Kerry Proctor coordinates this course for Aboriginal Family Support Workers. Ron Findlay coordinates the Graduate Certificate in Narrative Therapy. The academic unit is now ably supported by Penny Wong and Bridget Gray for management and administrative assistance, and they generally provide students’ first point of contact.
The courses now offered grew out of the work of the many experienced and talented therapists and theoreticians who have worked and still work at the Centre. The tradition of the Centre is to involve all staff in our teaching programs and to integrate all our clinical, teaching, consultative and research activities.
Our academic courses are structured to be flexible in nature and to be sensitive to full time workers. Students are expected to be working in relevant health, welfare or counselling fields as they proceed with the course in order to practise and develop their new skills. Both first and second years involve 6 hours of attendance (excluding breaks) per week. The Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy runs from 12.00pm to 6.30pm on a Monday. The first year of the Clinical Masters will be on a Wednesday between 12.00pm and 6.30pm* and the second year will be run on Thursday between 12.00pm and 6.30pm*. All courses will follow the university academic calendar starting in late February and continue to the end of October. They consist of two semesters, each of 13 weeks duration.
In the Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy, the course includes 3 hours of practical skills development work in small groups of 8 to 10. In these groups, role-plays, some live family work and videotapes are used to develop the family work skills of each student. In addition, each student researches and explores their family of origin, theoretical influences and context issues relevant to their work. There are also 3 hours per week of theory exploring different theoretical lenses useful in working with families. The learning approaches used in this unit involve didactic teaching, role-plays, and other interactional procedures that help in the integration of new concepts for students.
In the Master of Clinical Family Therapy students spend three and a half to four hours in small groups of up to 6 participants with a clinical supervisor. In the first year, students learn by observing their supervisors working with families and by conducting sessions at Bouverie with families from their own workplaces. There will also be opportunities for video and role play presentations. During this first year supervisors will explore with students the contributions that personal and work context issues play in their development as therapists.
In the second year families seeking assistance at The Bouverie Centre are seen by one or two students with the rest of the training group behind a one way screen. The team acts as a coach and as a reflecting team whenever this is appropriate. This intensive, “hands on” experience of developing family therapy skills is consistently rated by our students as the most challenging, educative and valued aspect of their training.
In addition, students attend two to two and a half hours of theory classes each week. These classes are designed to equip students to understand the philosophical underpinnings of many of the theories of family therapy, to explore various applications and to consider some methodological issues in family therapy research.
The provision of these courses is guided by the ethical principles of family therapists and is consistent with our centre’s commitment to family sensitive practice. These principles privilege the need for respect, agency and choice in working with clients, families and students.
If interested, you can read more about our current training philosophy and practices in the following article:
Perlesz, A., Dwyer, J., Elliott, R., Moloney, B., Riess, C., Rycroft, P., Welfare, A., & Young, J. (2002) Perspectives on teaching family therapy from the Bouverie Centre. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work No. 4, 72-78
*Depending on demand, live supervision groups may also be offered in a morning time slot.
