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Coronavirus: The Link Centre Through The Pandemic Years

9th August 2021

Who could have predicted the way the last 18 months has gone?  From those heady covid free days of early 2020, through government restrictions resulting in transferring our training to an online environment, finally resuming face to face training in July 2020 (with a spoonful of hybrid teaching and covid guidelines in place), the team and the students at the Link Centre have shone brightly and achieved wonderful things.

We are planning for our 2021/2022 core counselling and psychotherapy core training courses to be back in our training rooms at Plumpton College in East Sussex.

Our workshop programme will be a mixture of face to face training (Counselling Skills / TA101) with our CPD programme generally be delivered online (Personality Disorders, Families, Trauma, Couples Counselling, Applied TA in Clinical Practice).

Our extremely successful series of twice weekly online TA talks (in collaboration with Online Events) will recommence in the Autumn with some new and exciting subject matter such as Domestic Abuse with Catrina Topham, TA in schools with Piotr Jusik and a 2-part workshop on Divorce with Rachel Cook.

Please can we now have a little bit more sunshine and less rain for the remainder of our summer break!

25th March 2021

I enjoy occasionally updating this post and seeing how far we have travelled since my last post.  It is providing a historic record of our approach through these times and the dilemmas we have faced over the last year and how we rose to the challenge: One day we will be looking back at this article and saying do you remember those Covid days.

Or maybe in the future we will still be in those Covid days with ways of managing it and it just becoming part of everyday life.  Which way will it all go?

For our CPD training programme, online courses have become a staple part of our provision and participants are joining us from all corners of the globe.  It’s a very nourishing environment and one that is definitely here to stay.

We are hoping that the government road map out of lockdown 3 will progress in the timely manner that has been set out and that we can resume our core Counselling and Psychotherapy courses back in our training rooms,  face to face,  at some point this academic year.

17th November 2020

Such a long time since our last update.  Things were starting to look favourable in June, and 5 months later  . . . which way is it all going!

Our core Counselling and Psychotherapy courses commenced in October on an online platform and we were planning to resume face to face training at Plumpton in January 2021.

There are many things for us to consider though including the ethical implications of doing what we can to do no harm and to keep people safe.

As a tutor team we are very keen to get back to face to face as soon as possible as we are all really missing the ‘in the room’ contact with students but we must also consider the ethical implications of doing what we can to do no harm and to keep people safe.

At the same time we are aware that numbers are still increasing although it looks as if the R number is reducing slightly which is a positive. We imagine that people will do lots of socialising at Christmas and that may then send numbers up again. The whole situation is incredibly frustrating and its really challenging for us to plan ahead.

Our online workshops are continuing to be a lifeline for us, and for many of our participants.  We have introduced a new range of online workshops for 2021 including working with bereavement, creativity, eating disorders, and educational ta, alongside our popular working with trauma, couples counselling, working with groups, interpersonal neurobiology, counselling skills and introduction to transactional analysis.

One day we will all meet again face to face!

22nd June 2020

Slowly, slowly the next level of easing up is announced: we hope things continue to move in the right direction, and hope that we are able to resume our training in October.  We await future government announcements.

Our 2 hour online TA talks continue and we have introduced further online courses (Trauma and Interpersonal Neurobiology) and more are being planned as I write.  Our planned face to face courses upto 13th September have been moved online (Counselling Skills, TA101) and we have postponed the Certificate in Couples Counselling until we are able to run this face to face.

We have some online open evening events planned and a fast paced fund-raising event for Nicola’s Bionic Legs.

Keep upto date with all our news in our weekly newsletter.

21st May 2020 

As things start to ease up in terms of restrictions, the date of resuming our normal face to face training is still no clearer.

In the short term we have moved our TA101 on 13th/14th June to an online version and have also introduced new online courses (continuing to use Zoom), with many more to come.  If you have booked onto the next Couples Counselling Course, which starts in July,  and the July TA101, we will contact you mid June with the latest information.

4th May 2020 

The Counselling Skills course in May/June has been moved to an online platform and has now been widened and will now cater for those wanting Basic / Intermediate / Advanced Skills.

Our “you select what you pay”online  talks have become increasingly popular and on occasions places have sold out!

We have been pro-active in bringing together TA practitioners and students across the whole world and are embracing meeting up with our international TA community.

14th April 2020 

We are currently looking at the provision of our Counselling Skills course in May / June and will be providing an update very soon.

3rd April 2020 

Our online training is moving successfully forward and we will be transferring 3 more of our courses to an online format: Working with Groups (April), TA202 (May), TA101 (May). If you have booked onto these courses we will have already been in contact with you or we will be contacting you very shortly.

Our weekly TA talks on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday continue to be very well attended and it is lovely for us all to meet up in this online world.

30th March 2020 

As you are aware, we cannot offer any face to face courses at present and we are unsure how long this situation will last.

We have been running our core training and other courses online using Zoom and although there are a few technical glitches at the start of the day whilst getting everyone up and running,  it is  working well.

Whilst it is not the same as face to face, we are all in a position where we are being forced to work online and students are finding this is helping them get used to the technology and learn and engage in a different way.  A student from our Advanced TA training course gave this feedback from the training module this weekend.

“A huge thanks for the efforts you have put into providing a safe and engaging online learning environment for us this weekend. It appeared seamless and very slick and you demonstrated beautifully how this current environment demands change, and that such change is possible at breakneck speed! I have learnt so much about working online this weekend which I can take to supporting my clients.”  Amy

We are running some low cost (choose ticket level) TA Tuesday Talks, in order that we can stay connected – Tune in on Tuesday 30th when the topic is Psychobiological Hungers.  In addition, Leilani and Mark are taking part in a number of Onlinevents CPD talks (donation) with the next event being Mark talking on Dealing with Trauma using TA on Thursday 2nd April at 6pm.  Leilani had 209 attendees at her talk this morning on Anxiety and TA.

19th March 2020 

Further to the government announcement yesterday regarding the closure of schools and colleges, Plumpton College, the location of our training courses, will be closing down the college premises for face to face tuition from 5pm on Friday 20th March, until further notice.

We are delivering our core training modules using the Online platform Zoom and current students (Diploma in Supervision and Diploma in TA Counselling/Psychotherapy courses) should have received full details from us.

We are currently looking at delivering our April workshops using Zoom and will be contacting those who have booked onto those workshops as soon as we can.

16th March 2020 

We find ourselves in unchartered territory with the corona virus outbreak and the latest government announcements.

We are working hard to deliver some of our training using an online platform.  This allows face to face contact with the rest of the group and the tutor, sight of powerpoints, break-out rooms for smaller discussion groups, group and individual chat.

We are firstly working on the training courses running during the remainder of March.

• Our Wellbeing Evening on 18th March is cancelled. Please email us, with a contact number, if you were planning to come to the evening to discuss our counselling/psychotherapy training.  We will then contact you.
• If you have booked onto a course, we will be contacting you very shortly, if we haven’t done so already, with more information.
• For those on our part-time counselling/psychotherapy courses, with a training weekend on 28th/29th March, we will update you as soon as we can this week.
• It appears that this is not going to be over for quite a long while.  If you have booked overnight accommodation for any of our courses in April or May, we would suggest that look carefully at their cancellation policy and make a note of the refund / cancellation dates and cancel in good time.

13^th March 2020 

We are closely monitoring government advice regarding the current health situation and the impact this may have on our training provision.

At the moment, our courses are going ahead.  However, in line with government advice, if you have had the recent onset of a new continuous cough and/or a high temperature and are booked onto an upcoming course, please let us know and please don’t come to the Link Centre.  Please look after yourself and keep safe.

Although a lot of the following will already be familiar, just to reiterate the advice on the website on 13^th March from Public Health England:-

  The advice for anyone in any setting is to follow these main guidelines.

1. The most common symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are recent onset of a new continuous cough and/or high temperature. If you have these symptoms, however mild, stay at home and do not leave your house for 7 days from when your symptoms started. You do not need to call NHS 111 to go into self-isolation. If your symptoms worsen during home isolation or are no better after 7 days, contact NHS 111 online. If you have no internet access, you should call NHS 111. For a medical emergency dial 999.
2. Wash your hands more often than usual, for 20 seconds using soap and hot water, particularly after coughing, sneezing and blowing your nose, or after being in public areas where other people are doing so. Use hand sanitiser if that’s all you have access to.
3. To reduce the spread of germs when you cough or sneeze, cover your mouth and nose with a tissue, or your sleeve (not your hands) if you don’t have a tissue, and throw the tissue away immediately. Then wash your hands or use a hand sanitising gel.
4. Clean and disinfect regularly touched objects and surfaces using your regular cleaning products to reduce the risk of passing the infection on to other people.

Our courses are based at Plumpton College and Plumpton College have issued a statement on their website.  https://www.plumpton.ac.uk/our-college/news/coronavirus-update-2020-4713/  A lot of this relates specifically to their students, but it talks about the responsibility of us all to follow good hygiene practice and to follow government and NHS advice. They also talk about their increased cleaning activity in high traffic and contact areas.

Behind the scenes we are planning for various potential outcomes and whilst at the moment it is business as usual, taking the necessary precautions, things can change very quickly.

We will update you as soon as we can if you have booked onto one of our courses.  If you are planning on coming to the Wellbeing Evenings, please check our website before you set out and don’t come if you are ill as per above advice.