Training on The Certificate is headed up by Robin Sheehan, and co-led with other eQe Outdoor Consultants and Therapists.

You will be required to meet and demonstrate competencies within 5 separate Learning Units, which will be assessed as far as possible during training sessions, but crucially also in debriefings and discussions, and as part of your Portfolio and case-study Impact Assessment submissions.

 UNIT 1: Outdoor Skills 1 – Basic Bushcraft*

UNIT 2: Outdoor Skills 2 – Wilderness Therapeutic Group Management** 

UNIT 3: Therapeutic Approaches, Application and Best Practice**

UNIT 4: Design, Structure and Implementation of Wilderness Therapeutic Interventions**

UNIT 5: eQe 4-Dimensions Therapeutic Impact Assessment Approach**

*Robin is a qualified Advanced Bushcraft Practitioner, and you should expect your Bushcraft Unit training to be significantly higher level than typically you would expect in other mainstream outdoor qualifications that are not solely bushcraft.

**This is considered a very high level of training, being not just about outdoor activity, or outdoor pedagogy with young children; nor is it simply and implicitly “wellbeing” based through doing activity in nature:

• This is explicitly and intentionally Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Approaches training
• With this qualification, you are trained to be highly targeted for working with specific identified issues, all ages and abilities
• This training is for working with adults or children – people of all ages
• You are training to work to best therapeutic practice and best bushcraft practice

We have set the bar very high.  The content and expected workload to complete this multi-disciplinary Level 3 training is potentially 200 hours, earning successful Learners the Certificate grade qualification.

This training takes place over two separate weeks that you must attend.

What happens between the two training weeks, and after week 2?

These are periods of consolidation and practising skills and collecting evidences of your growing competence.

The time between the two training weeks is important, and is by design.  There has to be a consolidation period between Week 1 and Week 2, to do your own study and reflection on the content of Week 1.  Also, it’s a period to start to get to grips with your Portfolio of Evidences – This is the document which is a substantial list of competencies in each of the 5 Learning Units that you must demonstrate or fulfil in order to pass the course.

It is not possible to complete the Portfolio of Evidences without completing Week 2 of training, particularly Unit 4 and Unit 5, but also elements of Unit 3

Example programme (8 session) planning, design, and implementation normally takes place after Week 2, as does the Impact Analysis / Case Study which is based on your example programme which you will have run.

During Week 2 of training, there will be a deadline agreed and set with the group for subsequent completion and submission of Portfolio and Case Study / Impact Analysis.

Safeguarding – Working with vulnerable people in the UK

In order for you to work with vulnerable adults and all children in the UK you will need to meet Safeguarding Requirements and hold a current, clear DBS check, and also Public Liability Insurance.

This is an independently, externally accredited qualification by the NCFE / CACHE (see attached doc), and recognised / insurable for public liability insurance (e.g. through Birnbeck Insurance) so our successful Learners who then want to operate independently and professionally as practitioners can get insurance to do so.  This is not simply a “certificate of attendance” by a training provider, or a course which is self-certified by a training provider.  eQe are NCFE CACHE Approved Training Centre 9000398.

You will be required to have your own Public Liability Insurance in order to operate outdoors and leading others, when engaged in typical bushcraft-type and educational activities:

• After Week 1 of training we recommend you secure Trainee Insurance. This is very common and similarly available for e.g. trainee bushcraft practitioners and trainee forest-school practitioners.
• After passing Week 2 of Training, you will then be eligible for full Public Liability Insurance.
• We work with Birnbeck Insurance who are very experienced in outdoor practice insurances, and particularly with this Qualification requirements:

Birnbeck Finance Ltd, 129 High Street, Worle, Weston Super Mare, Somerset, BS22 6HQ

Tel: 01934 522252

Fax: 01934 520100

website: www.birnbeckinsurance.co.uk

Expectations

Training is completed only when both training weeks have been fully attended, and final Portfolios and Impact Assessment Reports have been submitted.  These will be marked, and may be Externally Quality Audited.

It is crucial to set your expectations high within this training – It is not simply “outdoor activity which implicitly improves wellbeing”, nor is it just an “add-on” to an existing qualification that you may have.  All Learners will receive training to typically achieve a very high working level and ability in order to confidently and competently, safely and successfully design and run Wilderness Therapeutic Interventions and other applications, independently.

Accessibility

Stating the obvious, but you need to be physically and mentally able and well enough in order to access this training.  A fundamental requirement is that you can physically operate well and normally in e.g. a woodland or other wilderness environment, unaided.  You need to be physically and mentally able enough to physically and emotionally look after the clients / children you may end up working with in a wilderness environment.  You may have to physically walk, run, clamber and crawl with them or after them.  Otherwise you may have difficulty in keeping your clients safe, accessing suitable environments to work in, and modelling certain activities or skills.

We will work with you as far as is reasonably possible to make this work for you but, more importantly, it must work for the clients / children you may end up working with in the future in this capacity.  We are open to any bright ideas, wisdom, new approaches or help with this and around this.  (I would love to explore this area more – Robin)

You understand the limitations (as well as perhaps the boundary benefits) of being inside four walls with a ceiling, a floor, a door, windows, and chairs to sit on.  But you have an inkling, or perhaps you read somewhere, that being in nature is good for you, and it adds some benefit to a person’s general wellbeing and can facilitate a clinical therapeutic process.

You might or might not understand that “in the wild” is not the same as “being outdoors” which could mean the middle of a car park.  You want to know more, and explore if and how you can take your therapeutic practice with clients outdoors, into something approaching “nature”.

You want to expand your Trained Therapist or Counsellor bubble and make steps towards incorporating appropriate and proper outdoor skills and practice in the wild.  And you are open to enlightenment as how you might fit into what is “true” applied Wilderness Therapy, explicitly impacting mental health and wellbeing, beyond simply moving your current indoor sessions and sitting doing them somewhere nice outdoors.

You may already be an inherently “outdoor skills” based organisation such as the Scouting Association, or you may not.  You want to expand your current mission or objectives beyond e.g. Character Education, or indeed start to fulfil the Mission of your organisation in a new way.  Say, by exploring the possibility of offering additional programmes for identified children, which are explicitly therapeutic, or explicitly defined and structured Character Education programmes, and based outdoors in nature and the wild.

In training we’ll explore the variety of different flavours of common outdoor approaches often used with adults, children or schools, along with exploring what is best Wilderness Therapeutic practice.  We will learn how you can – and cannot – integrate some of these approaches together.  You need to understand what is appropriate therapeutically and what is not, and build up an intelligent appreciation and high level of expertise in these three things:

Outdoor expertise and best practice – learning what we need to know in order to facilitate delivery of Wilderness Therapy.  This needs to be learned to a high level, in order to meet the needs of working with identified individuals with specific issues and objectives.

Therapeutic expertise and best practice – what therapeutic approaches and activities do we find and use in Wilderness Therapy?

How to integrate these two areas, into true Wilderness Therapy practice… 1 + 1 = 3

It is important to recognise this whole area is not on a par with simply doing “mainstream outdoor activities or education in the woods” which might then implicitly benefit a participant’s immediate sense of wellbeing in the short or immediate term.

This goes way beyond these other approaches.  You are training explicitly in Wilderness Therapeutic Practice, structured and run to best therapeutic practice, with defined outcomes and objectives for each participant, for a long-lasting impact.

LOGISTICS AND BOOKING – Book on our scheduled training weeks, at our designated locations.  You will need to find your own accommodation, and bring a packed lunch each day.  Some of the training will be indoors or under cover, and a lot will be outdoors in a wild environment, learning as experientially as possible.

BOOK HERE>>>

eQe people have been:

• Delivering professional therapeutic provision, and interventions in schools, since 2002
• Teaching and training people since 1998
• Working professionally with the natural environment since 1983

eQe utilises the expertise of our highly qualified, very experienced Outdoor Specialists, Wilderness Vision Quest Guides, a professional Environmental Scientist; Business Coach; Army Officers; and also the expertise of our award-winning Lead Therapist and team of Qualified Therapists and Counsellors.  All content has been carefully designed to have maximum impact, with specific objectives, groups and individuals in mind.

• In 2016 Robin Sheehan (Director, eQeOUTDOORS) was invited to consult for the NHS on the use of community woodlands and NHS greenspaces, focusing on how to measure the impact on wellbeing operating in these spaces. Working alongside the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, his contributions are in the document “ROOTS TO WELLBEING- A handbook for evaluating and communicating the wellbeing impact of woodland social enterprises”
• In 2006 our Lead Therapist received the Play Therapy International Award.

All of our training programmes and interventions have been developed by experienced trainers, teachers and therapists.

eQeOUTDOORS continuously develops and pioneers Wilderness Therapeutic Practice and training, targeting both children and adults.