Coronavirus (COVID-19)
COVID-19 is having a serious impact on our communities. We understand that there are uncertainties right now, but we want to reassure you that our service is still operating. We are dedicated to supporting our clients and the National Health Service.
We will continue to provide intercultural therapy to those who need it most, in many languages. We will do our best to maintain the levels of service provision and go further where possible.
In order to protect clients, staff and to prevent further spread of coronavirus, we have moved to remote working and telephone therapy. We will continue to follow guidance from the government and our professional bodies to ensure that these changes are implemented safely and responsibly. Our Centre at Unit 4 Lysander Mews is now closed until further notice.
The NHS has useful tips on how to look after your mental wellbeing while staying at home: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-staying-at-home-tips/
Nafsiyat is not a crisis service. If you or someone you know is having a mental health crisis, contact the appropriate team:
Camden & Islington
– Crisis Team: 020 3317 6333
– Camden GP Hub: 020 7391 9979
– Islington GP Hub: 0203 859 4959
– Islington GP Hub: islingtonGP@nhs.net
Haringey
– Crisis Team: 020 8702 6700
– Haringey GP Advice Line: 020 8702 3620
Enfield
– Crisis Team: 0208 702 3800
– Enfield GP Advice Line: 0208 702 3335/3336
Please take care of yourself and support others during this tumultuous time.
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Nafsiyat Choice is accepting referrals
Nafsiyat helps people who experience psychological and emotional problems and find it difficult to access help due to several barriers, which might include areas such as, culture and language.
Last year we started a new service to make our unique intercultural therapeutic support available to a wider range of people.
Nafsiyat Choice is available to individuals from any London borough. The service is delivered in the evening (or other times by arrangement) and can be on an open-ended, long-term basis.
The initial assessment session is £60. Our weekly fees are then between £40 and £60 per session depending on each individual financial situation. Each session lasts 50 minutes.
If you would like to apply to us for therapy under our Nafsiyat Choice service, you can download a referral form here:
Nafsiyat Choice referral form [Word doc 131KB]
Nafsiyat Choice Info Sheet [PDF 126KB]
Right click to download and save the file, then email completed forms to choice@nafsiyat.org.uk.
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Mayor’s charities Nafsiyat and Centre 404 take on Hackney Half
Nafsiyat and Centre 404 take on Hackney Half as the two charities the Mayor of Islington, Councillor Rakhia Ismail, has chosen to support this year. This is a fantastic opportunity to fundraise and run the Hackney Half marathon and make a huge difference to the lives of those we work with.
We have limited tickets, so sign up before it is too late: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/run-for-nafsiyat-hackney-half-marathon-tickets-95108783933
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The Royal College of Psychiatrists recognise Nafsiyat
Nafsiyat is included (Appendix 3: page 28) in The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Advancing Mental Health Equality (AMHE) resource as a positive practice example.
The AMHE resource was commissioned by NHS England to support delivery of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and the NHS Long Term Plan.
It is a resource to support commissioners and providers to tackle mental health inequalities in their local areas. It outlines comprehensive and practical steps for commissioners and service providers to reduce inequalities in an achievable and measurable way.
Nafsiyat was chosen because of our alignment with the co-produced Advancing Mental Health Equality Key Principles.
You can find more information and download the Advancing Mental Health Equality resource from the The Royal College of Psychiatrists website, click here.
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Placement applications open
We are currently accepting applications from trainee counsellors and trainee therapists for placement. To be considered, you must be in at least your second year of training.
The therapy modalities that we consider are psychodynamic and integrative, which includes a psychodynamic component.
We are particularly interested in applications from people who are able to speak any of the following languages:
★ Bengali (Sylheti)
★ Farsi
★ Arabic
If you were successful in gaining a trainee placement with us, we would be able to offer you:
★ Subsidised weekly supervision with a UKCP accredited supervisor
★ Up to 50 supervised clinical hours with clients (our work is short-term)
★ Training in our short-term psychodynamic Intercultural approach to therapy
★ Training on IT systems widely used by the NHS
★ Access to Training and CPD opportunities
How to apply
Please contact us to discuss your particular interest or requirement. To apply, please email us at admin@nafsiyat.org.uk with:
★ Your CV
★ A statement of interest giving as much information as possible about why you would like to do a placement at Nafsiyat
★ Information about the language or languages that you can work in.
Cultural Competence Training – November 10th
Delivered by Baffour Ababio 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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Nafsiyat chosen by the Mayor of Islington
Nafsiyat is incredibly pleased to have been chosen as one of the charities that will receives support from the new Mayor of Islington, Rakhia Ismail.
Last Thursday, Councillor Rakhia Ismail became the UK’s first Muslim, Somali-born, hijab wearing Mayor.
We look forward to working with her, and her other chosen charity, Centre 404, to raise much needed funds and increase awareness about the work we do.
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Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Development
A new book – Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Developments – examines the impact of our work at the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre.
The editors of this book have invited a number of Nafsiyat therapists and colleagues to give their view on what has changed, or not changed, in regard to the integration of intercultural issues into mainstream therapy.
Intercultural Therapy will be of interest to all psychotherapists working in multicultural practices, as well as practitioners and social workers.
About the editors:
Baffour Ababio is a psychoanalytic intercultural psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in private practice and at the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre, where he has also worked as head of clinical services.
Roland Littlewood was associated with Jafar Kareem at the start of Nafsiyat and retired a few years ago as professor of psychiatry and anthropology at University College London, where he is now a research fellow.
The book is available to buy from Amazon and Routledge.
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Stories from Nafsiyat
The Nafsiyat research team, led by a medical anthropologist currently completing her PhD research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Natassia Brenman, have finished working on a project conducting research into the therapy work that Nafsiyat does.
The project aimed to capture narratives about the processes involved with accessing the service and progressing through therapy as well as collecting rich, qualitative feedback from clients about their experiences at different stages of their journey.
The resultant narrative research report is now published here, with an introduction from Senior Psychotherapist, Baffour Ababio.
Click here to read Stories from Nafsiyat.
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Support Nafsiyat in bagging Tesco’s funding!
Nafsiyat is bidding to bag a cash boost from the Tesco Bags of Help initiative.
Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to launch its community funding scheme, which sees grants of £4,000, £2,000 and £1,000 raised from carrier bag sales in Tesco stores awarded to local community projects.
Three groups in every Tesco region have been shortlisted to receive the cash award and shoppers are being invited to head along to Tesco stores to vote for who they think should take away the top grant.
Nafsiyat is one of the groups on the shortlist.
Voting is open in all Tesco stores in March and customers will cast their vote using a token given to them at the check-out in store each time they shop. Visit one of the stores listed below to vote for us!
- > City Road Express Store EC2A 4DE
- > Archway Holloway Road Express Store N19 5SS
- > Caledonian Road Express Store N7 8TP
- > Chiswell Street Express Store EC1Y 4TY
- > Clerkenwell Street Express Store EC1V 3AF
- > Drayton Park Express Store N5 1AN
- > Essex Road Express Store N1 2EB
- > Highbury Metro Store N7 8JP
- > Hornsey Express Store N19 4HN
- > Islington Green Metro Store N1 8DU
- > Kings Cross Metro Store N1 9DX
- > Newington Green Express Store N16 9BS
- > New North Street Express Store N1 8SY
- > Pentonville Road Express Store N1 9TT
- > Seven Sisters Road Express Store N4 2HY
- > Sisters Road Express Store N7 7NS
- > St John Clerkenwell Express Store EC1V 4UD
- > Stroud Green Metro Store N4 3PX
Tesco’s Bags of Help project has already delivered over £63 million to more than 20,000 projects across Britain. Tesco customers get the chance to vote for three different groups every time they shop. Every other month, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tesco’s regions will be awarded funding.
Alec Brown, Head of Community at Tesco, said:
“Bags of Help has been a fantastic success and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response from customers. It’s such a special scheme because it’s local people who decide how the money will be spent in their community. There are some fantastic projects on the shortlists and we can’t wait to see these come to life in hundreds of communities.”
Groundwork’s National Chief Executive, Graham Duxbury, said:
“Bags of Help continues to enable local communities up and down Britain to improve the local spaces and places that matter to them. The diversity of projects that are being funded shows that local communities have a passion to create something great in their area. We are pleased to be able to be a part of the journey and provide support and encouragement to help local communities thrive.”
Funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities. Anyone can nominate a project and organisations can apply online. To find out more visit www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp.
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