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Six Day Specialist Certificate
30 hours CPD | In Person
Neurodivergent children and young people experience themselves and the world in individual ways. Their capacity to communicate, connect, regulate and engage can change sifnificantly depending on what is happening within them, around them and between them and others.
This six-day experiential programme invites therapists to explore functionality: moving beyond labels and behaviours to become curious about what a young person is experiencing, what their responses may be doing for them and how environment and context influence what becomes possible.
Understanding Functionality Differently
Moving beyond "What's wrong?" towards "What's happening here?"
Neurodivergent-affirming practice asks more of us than learning about diagnostic categories or making adjustments to established ways of working.
Working therapeutically with neurodivergent CYP means becoming curious about the relationship between the young person, their sensory and emotional experience, their environment, the people around them and the context in which something is happening.
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Across six experiential training days, we'll explore how this understanding can inform the therapeutic relationship and help practitioners develop ways of working that respond to the individual young person rather than expecting the young person to adapt to therapy.
Functionality Doesn't Happen in Isolation
The relationship between Functionality, Environment and Context
A young person's functionality doesn't exist independently of the world around them. What feels possible in one environment, relationship or situation may feel very different in another.
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The Functionality, Environment and Context framework (FECit©, Zara Winstanley, 2025) invites us to notice these relationships. Rather than locating difficulty solely within the child or young person, we explore what changes when the environment changes, when the context changes, and when our understanding of the young person's experience changes.
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Across the programme, we'll use this framework to develop curiosity about what we're noticing in the therapy room and beyond it: What might be influencing functionality here? What is the environment asking of this young person? What does the context help us understand? And what might we, as therapists, do differently?
What We'll Explore Together
Six days to notice, question, experience and apply
This isn't six days of learning about neurodivergent children and young people. It's an opportunity to explore what neurodivergent-affirming therapeutic practice can look and feel like when we begin with the individual young person in front of us.
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Across the programme, we'll explore sensory functioning, communication, emotional experience and regulation, alongside experiences including anxiety, alexithymia, demand avoidance and situational mutism. We'll consider how these can show up differently for individual CYP - and what can get missed when we interpret what we see through a predominantly neurotypical lens.
We'll also turn the lens towards ourselves. Through experiential activities, case material, discussion and reflection, you'll be invited to notice your own sensory and relational responses, question assumptions and consider how you, the therapeutic environment and the way therapy is offered become part of the context too.
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The aim isn't to leave with a new set of rules for working with neurodivergent CYP. It's to develop a more curious, flexible and responsive therapeutic practice - one that helps you ask “What might be happening here?” before deciding what something means.
Is This Course For Me?
This programme is designed for qualified and trainee counsellors and therapists who work with, or are interested in developing their work with, neurodivergent children and young people.
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You might already work regularly with neurodivergent CYP, be beginning to encounter neurodivergence within your practice, or simply recognise that your existing therapeutic training hasn't given you enough opportunity to explore what neurodivergent-affirming practice can look like.
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You don't need to arrive with specialist knowledge. We ask instead that you bring curiosity, openness and a willingness to reflect on your own practice and assumptions.
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Because the programme focuses on therapeutic practice, it is particularly suited to practitioners who want to move beyond simply knowing about neurodivergence towards thinking about how that understanding influences the way we meet, understand and work alongside an individual young person.