A psychotherapy practice in Hackney, East London
Reflective group practice for justice-oriented organisations
We are offering organisations a new way to support staff wellbeing and respond to the challenges of NGO work: reflective group practice.
The pressures facing NGO staff are enormous. We work in often high-pressure and high-risk environments. Burnout and fatigue common, and the nature of the work can be extremely challenging, with staff pulled between their motivation to make change and the overwhelming nature of the challenges faced.
Group reflective practice creates a space for people to talk and think about experiences like this in a small, supportive, and facilitated group. These sessions give staff a regular and reliable space to reflect on their work and think together about the challenges they face, including their experiences dealing with existential anxieties, guilt, traumatic material and traumatised individuals.
By building cohesion as a group, and receiving support from trained facilitators, staff can feel confident bringing difficult feelings or challenging experiences, and listening to one another. Differences between staff members’ lived experience can also be explored more openly and honestly on a regular basis.
Services we offer:
- Long-term reflective groups, for individual organisations or staff from a similar sector, aimed at making meaning and understanding the challenges inherent to the work, building community and deepening trust.
- Shorter-term reflective groups focussed on dealing with a particular issue or incident.
- One off training sessions focused on trauma-informed practice, aimed at creating a deeper understanding of the impact of working with challenging or traumatic material, or with traumatised people, and how this can be handled. These sessions are primarily targeted at staff with responsibility for wellbeing, HR and team culture, or managers, to equip them with an understanding of how traumatic experience could be affecting their teams.
- Support and consultancy for in-house staff planning ongoing team culture and wellbeing programmes, to integrate these concepts into their work.
Who is this for?
Reflective practice groups are for any third sector organisations whose staff need support to help manage and process challenging experiences or emotions that come up in the course of their work. This could include organisations working on climate justice, human rights, or providing services to others.
Why is this needed?
Organisations across the sector seek to support their staff, but one-off or infrequent wellbeing sessions can end up feeling like another sticking plaster, and advice can feel difficult to implement effectively amidst day to day realities. Longer term group work addresses this issue by providing a regular, reliable forum where experiences can be thought about. By participating in groups with colleagues or peers in the sector, staff can strengthen relationships, reduce isolation, and learn from each others’ experiences.
Contact us to find out more, or attend our free webinar discussion on 17 June at 12.00 GMT.
Jessica Sinclair Taylor
Jessica was the Deputy Director of an environmental justice organisation, with nearly 20 years experience in the human rights, environment and justice sector, working on climate, child poverty, international development and women’s rights.
She has extensive experience with addressing complex internal and relational questions and supporting organisations to think about challenging topics, such as racism and oppression.
She is a psychotherapist in training, trained in psychoanalytic approaches to mental health, and has significant experience working with people experiencing mental distress and emotional challenges, including in the NHS.
Matthew Leidecker
Matthew is a psychotherapist with a background in human rights work.
As a therapist, he is trained in intercultural psychodynamic psychotherapy, and has extensive clinical experience working with adults in the NHS, community organisations and private practice.
Previously, Matthew spent over 15 years working for human rights organisations on some of the most important issues of our time, including migration and asylum, immigration detention, torture, Guantanamo Bay, and the death penalty.
Matthew has worked directly with people in immigration detention centres, prisons and on death row, and is an experienced group facilitator.
He is a full member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, and is regulated by their codes of ethics and practice.
Get in Touch
For more information, please contact us using this form:
“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.”
