Seeking Group Therapy Trainee
We are looking for a group therapy trainee, who will participate in facilitating psycho education, therapy, or reflective groups.
We encourage applications from:
> Bilingual trainees
> Psychodynamic or Analytic oriented trainees
> Lived experience of being a refugee is desirable
We are a friendly and experienced team and supervision will be provided by an experienced group analyst. To apply, please submit a CV with a cover letter to: admin@nafsiyat.org.uk
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Baffour Ababio, Clinical Lead
We are pleased to share the news that, following a one-year secondment, Baffour Ababio has been appointed as the Clinical Lead of Nafsiyat.
Baffour Ababio is a psychoanalytic intercultural psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in private practice and at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. Baffour completed his training at University College London and the Guild of Psychotherapists and is a member of UKCP and BAPPS (British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervision). Alongside his clinical role Baffour developed a career in managing mental health services integrating a community based response to support recovery from a broad range of mental health problems.
Baffour also co-edited the book ‘Intercultural Therapy – Challenges, Insights and Developments’ which was published by Routledge in 2019, and is currently working on another.
He is an asset to our organisation and will ensure that even more people have access to the culturally accessible therapeutic support they need.
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Haringey: support available
Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on Britain’s minorities. The critical preventative measures implemented to stem the spread of the virus, such as social distancing and self-isolation, have also impacted already marginalised groups to a much greater extent.
Nafsiyat is now providing same language and culturally sensitive brief emotional interventions to adults (18+) from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds who are registered with a Haringey GP or are frontline health/care staff working in Haringey, and struggling with issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic. These issues could be around bereavement, grief or loss.
Referrals, including self-referrals, can be made through the online referral form or by email, click here. Please mention Covid-19 as a reason.
Our services are currently all being provided via telephone or video platforms.
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Interculturality within the Supervisory Relationship – Zoom training – 24th Oct
Nafsiyat will again run its successful one-day workshop for supervisors and supervisees, to explore interculturality within the supervisory relationship. It will be held online via Zoom on Sunday 24th October 2021 and tickets are available now through Eventbrite.
There have been many books, workshops and training program on psychotherapy and counselling across cultural and ‘racial’ borders since the publication of ‘intercultural therapy’ in the early 1990’s. However, its integration and application to the supervisory relationship is still at an early stage. Has supervision been slow in recognising, understanding, valuing diversity in race, culture and ethnicity? The integration of racial, cultural and diversity related issues in clinical supervision, is an essential component of clinical and teaching competence which has important implications for the provision of services to “minorities” and more broadly to better addressing the full realm of clients’ intrapsychic and interpersonal worlds.
The workshop will draw on Jafar Kareem’s widely cited definition of intercultural therapy with a very minor but significant revision in its relevance to the supervision relationship. Jafar’s definition as applied to supervision referenced below:
“A Form of dynamic psychotherapy (supervison) that takes into account the whole being of the patient (supervisor and supervisee) – not only the individual concepts and constructs as presented to the therapist (and supervisor), but also the patient’s (and supervisee’s and supervisor’s) communal life experience in the world – both past and present. The very fact of being from another culture involves both conscious and unconscious assumptions, both in the patient and the therapist (supervisor). I believe that for the successful outcome of therapy (and supervison) it is essential to address these conscious and unconscious assumptions from the beginning”.
The workshop will look at the experience of supervision from both angles; as a supervisee and as a supervisor. The group work will discuss and reflect on what a culturally competent supervision might look like. We know that any therapeutic work to be of benefit to both practitioner and client requires a good enough reflective space, provided through supervision to facilitate the process. It will do this through:
>> An exploration of some comments made by supervisees on the difficulty of raising issues of difference in their supervision with their supervisors.
>> A Look at embedded community stories, and how these tales might in the clinical setting enable dynamics of avoidance and collusion. Could supervision facilitate a working through?
>> An examination of concepts of oppression, domination and privilege at play in the supervision space.
>> Might external issues be very present in both spaces (therapy and supervision) and avoided or not recognised?
>> Shame, anger, silence and its manifestations (physiologically or otherwise).
There will be an opportunity for participants to work on some of their own material from their practice and experience as supervisors and supervisees.
To find out more or to get your tickets, click here
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New Chair of Trustees, Jane Cook
We are pleased to announce that Nafsiyat’s new Chair of Trustees is Jane Cook. Jane has been a Nafsiyat Trustee since 2015 and has previously served as Chair.
Jane is a Registered General Nurse and Public Health Specialist (Health Visitor) who works at a strategic level focusing on transformational change that aims to meet the needs of individuals, families and communities. Jane has worked with excluded groups for the past 36 years and promotes person centred and holistic care that is equitable.
“The work of Nafsiyat is more crucial than ever before as society deals with the inequalities and grief that have been exposed by COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Through intercultural therapy, Nafsiyat is able to support individuals and organisations to address their grief, and through training can support organisations who want to address race equality.”
“I am proud, as Chair, to be working with such committed and experienced staff and trustees. It’s exciting times for Nafsiyat as we move to influence change within communities and organisations that will address inequity.”
Nafsiyat’s Trustee Board would like to thank previous Chair, Dr. William Obomanu, for his contributions to Nafsiyat during his time as a Trustee.
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Cultural Competence Training via Zoom – May 22nd
Delivered by Caroline Adewole and Sega Habtom.
The workshop will draw on clinical examples and work as well as the intercultural experience to put forward the processes involved in working at the juncture of the client’s inner and outer experiences. The evocation of shame and avoidance in the dyadic or group encounter of intersecting differences and sameness will also be explored. “Any clinical encounter that does not take into account the client’s whole life experience and does not consider their race, culture, gender or social values, can only fragment that person.” (Jafar Kareem, co-founder of Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre). In the workshop Jafar’s quote will be applied to societal/individual assumptions with regards to racism and sexism. There will be an opportunity for participants to work on some of their own material from their practice.
Through case material and film attendees will dynamically work through concepts/themes and questions such as:
>> Institutional racism/domination/oppression. Participants will explore how clients from minority communities deploy strategies to cope with their varying levels of internal and external experiences of persecution.
>> This workshop aims to enhance participants’ self-awareness, empathic knowledge and understanding of other cultures and conceptualisation of identity formation. Attendees in exploring their own processes, whether from dominant or minority groups will be more attuned to the impact of their therapeutic engagements with their clients.
>> It will touch on the extent to which therapy/mental health organisations facilitate or inhibit the capacity of its practitioners to critically engage in conversations around cultural competency.
>> The workshop will allow for the exploration of how cultural competency can be applied in supervision. It will therefore look at the experience of supervision from both angles; as a supervisee and as a supervisor. The group work will discuss and reflect on what a culturally competent supervision might look like. We know that any therapeutic work to be of benefit to both practitioner and client requires a good enough thinking space, provided through supervision to facilitate the process.
>> Cultural competent work operates within the context of the external realities of the historic as well the present. Participants will look at the penetration of political shifts in the UK such as Brexit into the clinical engagements of practitioners. This conversation can be framed as the frontiers of culturally competent thinking.
To find out more or to get your tickets, click here
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BAMEStream Bereavement Support
This is a FREE Bereavement Support Service that we are providing as a member of the BAMEStream alliance.
Who we will support
Anyone aged 18 and over who identifies as Black, Asian or any other Minoritised Ethnicity who has been affected by the death of a loved one due to Covid-19, and is registered with a GP in England.
What we will provide
Nafsiyat will provide FREE culturally competent brief emotional online support to anyone from a Black, Asian or other Minority Ethnic background experiencing bereavement and loss due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
THIS WILL CONSIST OF THREE INDIVIDUAL ONLINE OR TELEPHONE BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT SESSIONS
The pandemic has had a devastating impact on our communities and has been felt in painfully unique ways by the Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnic Communities.
>> Of not being able to say goodbye.
>> The impact of suppressing longstanding distinct bereavement rituals within these communities.
>> The Isolation, loneliness and the anger felt at the structural inequities implicated in the Covid deaths.
>> Of not being able to celebrate the deceased person’s life and the impact of this on daily functioning.
The FREE online bereavement support sessions at Nafsiyat will provide a space designed to enable reflection and to consider support options. The three sessions of brief emotional online support will provide:
>> A space to be heard, listened to and to access information that can help you understand what you’re going through.
>> Suggest and discuss some practical steps to help manage your day to day living tasks.
>> Support you to engage with appropriate emotional and practical support networks.
>> All Nafsiyat practitioners work in a culturally competent way and have been enhanced DBS checked.
Making a referral
The easiest way to get help from the service is to make a referral online. This will open a secure web page where you can enter your details. Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre will then make contact you within a few days of receiving your referral.
We also have a downloadable referral form that can be completed and sent to us via email (details are provided on the form). If you are unable to complete the referral by email, this can be made over the phone instead.
Download health professional form
Telephone referral
020 7263 6947
Subscribe to our Newsletter
We’re very happy to announce our brand new Newsletter has just gone live on MailChimp. Here you’ll be able to read the very latest about our news, events, fundraising and everything Nafsiyat. You can also subscribe to our newsletter. Why not take a moment and click the link.
https://mailchi.mp/2fe053d6f5c0/nafsiyat-newsletter
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Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre statement: Black Lives Matter
The final nine minutes of George Floyd’s life captured on a smartphone camera, ignited the injustices which had for so long been seared into the lives of black people. The image of a white policeman’s knee bearing down on a black man’s neck, casually snuffing the life out of him, blew the lid off, setting in train protests and demonstrations across America and ricocheting around the globe, with the singular message; black lives matter.
That black lives mattered was the impetus for Nafsiyat’s creation in the early 1980s, which was against the prevailing context of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities’ limited access to counselling and psychotherapy. Of their overrepresentation, then as now, in psychiatric hospitals (particularly locked wards), probation services and prisons, in proportion to their numbers within the general population.
The ethos of our work as a UKCP registered organisational member then as now interrogates in the consulting room the often-uncomfortable spaces between different cultures, and working through – rather than avoiding, the social justice issues as they emerge. We have long since acknowledged and worked with the impact of external events on the internal worlds of our clients and our therapists; that old wounds are constantly being prodded and re-opened (re-traumatisation). Our communities at Nafsiyat impacted disproportionately by COVID-19 will struggle in any attempt made to locate the current events as external in origin, as their/our lives are constantly being experienced at that interface of heightened tension.
This is a critical juncture for black people and intercultural work is needed, now more than ever. We continue to provide uninhibited therapeutic spaces for our clients to draw breath and to explore and engage with their problems in the context of the glaring ‘racial’ injustices in not far away America but within our country, the United Kingdom. In their interludes: in supervision, CPDs, personal therapy and clinical meetings, our diverse therapists are as before, processing these live questions. Thereby, enabling and expanding their capacity to offer support and to engage in conversations and discussions which underline the fact that we cannot afford to allow black lives to linger and endure at the margins of existence.
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The Mayor’s Campaign
Due to Covid-19 the Institute of Fundraising announced a startling statistic suggesting that up to 48% of all voluntary giving to charities would have fallen due to the pandemic. So together with Centre 404 and the Mayor of Islington we launched the Mayor’s campaign to help us through this pandemic and keep our services running.
Take action: Covid-19s impact on Nafsiyat and Centre 404 the Mayor’s two chosen charities. Will you back the Mayor’s campaign by donating today? By donating £5, £10, £15 or other, you will help us keep supporting some of society’s already most isolated, marginalised and vulnerable people.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/centre404nafsiyatcoronavirusappeal
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