• The Certificate in Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Approaches is an externally accredited Level 3 qualification under the category of Customised Qualification. It is accredited by NCFE / CACHE, and although Level 3 the content and expectation is such that it is designated as Certificate level training.
• The Award in Wilderness Therapeutic Approaches and Interventions is an externally accredited Level 2 qualification under the category of Customised Qualification. It is externally accredited by the NCFE / CACHE organisation.

Certificates of Qualification come from the external awarding body (NCFE), and are not just “certificates of attendance” from the training organisation, or non-accredited “certification” by the training organisation.  Certificates are genuine and directly associated with the achievement of these externally accredited qualifications.

By “recognised and accepted therapeutic approaches” we mean actual therapeutic approaches recognised by the professional therapeutic community, not simply the more ubiquitous and passive “implicit effect on wellbeing” commonly latched on to in outdoor activities.  It is wonderful to be outdoors in nature doing different activities of all kinds, but we must remember the actual objectives of engaging in these very different outdoor disciplines, and be honest and firm in these truths, or we run the risk of misleading participants and clients in our expertise and outcomes, and failing them.  Bushcraft Practitioners do not have training in forest school pedagogy, and should not claim to be “doing” forest school; and Forest School Practitioners should likewise be aware that forest school training in the UK is nowhere even near the level of bushcraft and wilderness living skills achieved by a qualified Bushcraft Practitioner.  Similarly, the implicit impact on wellbeing experienced during participation in these, or in archaeology, or LOTC (learning outside the classroom), or adventure activities etc, cannot be placed in the same ball park as Wilderness Therapy and Therapeutic Interventions as a discipline.  These are all very different subjects, with very different objectives.          

Let’s be clear here – Wilderness Therapy has been growingly used incorrectly and unprofessionally as a cover-all term for anything we do in the outdoors that “makes us feel better”.  It has become reduced down by inappropriate overuse in a number of common outdoor activities as pop-science “wilderness therapy”, instead of true “Wilderness Therapy”. 

If I happen to be a Therapist, I don’t believe it is just a case of deciding to take my therapeutic practice outdoors – I don’t believe it’s as simple a transition as that – and suddenly “I am now a Wilderness Therapist”.  Children shape-shift into entirely different animals and personalities when let loose in the wild on a group intervention, compared to being let loose in the sand pit in a play-therapy room.  And everything goes sideways when it starts to throw it down with rain and I need outdoor skills to then a) get shelter expertly sorted and fast, with a fire and a bacon butty, and b) use my outdoor practitioner expertise to adapt my practice and approach, already having anticipated and planned for that situation, to actively and explicitly use it positively and therapeutically, against a backdrop of children’s mindsets now having flipped and changed along with their focus and needs at this moment – really knowing what to do about it as an expert outdoor practitioner.

And if I happen to be an Outdoor Practitioner, neither is it just about deciding one day to focus on the “implicit healing power of nature” because everyone says it’s the thing to be doing, while having a walk in the woods, some hot chocolate and a nice chat.  …And now I’m magically doing something called Wilderness Therapy.

I actually regard both of these mindsets as naïve and disrespectful to each other, and to those specific professional groups and individuals who have put a great deal of investment, time, study, skills development (both therapeutic and wilderness living skills), hard won experience, and process development into their very deliberate, well-structured and intelligent Wilderness Therapeutic practice.  Not just in the sunshine.  Not just in a nice therapeutic garden.  And not just doing bushcraft or forest school with individuals who have identified issues, without proper training in well thought out, planned therapeutic approaches, activities and defined objectives.  Those are neither WILDERNESS nor THERAPY.

You need to be both, at the same time!  They are both very expert disciplines, that should be respected as such, in the context of Wilderness Therapy.

Since 2011 we have designed and implemented a number of targeted Wilderness Therapeutic Interventions, because they are all designed and constructed to be impactful at different age / ability levels and developmental levels.                                                                         

In this training, we will draw on eQe’s unique expertise and long experience of combining different disciplines, and designing successful and impactful Wilderness Therapeutic Interventions.  

eQe people have been training others since 1998.  Hundreds of school staff and children’s workers have implemented eQe approaches, programmes and had eQe therapeutic training.  Using impact assessment data from a range of different schools and widely different profiles of children, our Wilderness Therapeutic Interventions show dramatic changes in children using Standardised Therapeutic Measures over only 8 half-day sessions:

• 88% of children reduced their Total Difficulties Scores, e.g. measured in Externalising Behaviours (Conduct and Hyperactivity), and Internalising Behaviours (Emotional Problems and Peer Problems)
• 95.5% of children improved their Pro-Social Scores

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 implicitly good for you, and it adds some benefit to a person’s general wellbeing and can potentially 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 children 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 with children and young adults 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 work with children or young adults on a regular basis outside of the education system, but which is no different to anyone else, in that it includes children that are identified for any number of reasons, as having social, emotional, behavioural or other diagnosed issues and conditions.  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.