Kate Anthony

OTI Europe Ltd | Consultancy, Personal Training and Research for Online Therapeutic Services

   

New Year, New OTI Tutor!

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It’s a total pleasure for us to be starting the new year with a new appointment to the OTI Tutor Team!

Jane Fahy graduated from the Online Therapy Institute in 2013 with her Certified Cyber Facilitator qualification, and since then has been hard at work with GamblingTherapy.org as their Clinical Services Manager, a global online service for those affected by problem gambling. She also undertakes face-to-face work with problem gamblers in a residential setting for the Gordon Moody Association, and has been working with this client group for six years.  She is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

At OTI, we are always looking to expand our suite of online training courses – this is why our course offerings encompass topics as diverse as cognitive behavioural coaching, handling emotions at work, domestic violence, working with essential oils, and success motivation, alongside our core topics of transferring therapeutic skills to an online practice environment as a coach or therapist.  Inviting Jane to join the tutor team, with her experience as both an online counsellor and a gambling addiction specialist was an obvious choice!

Jane and I look forward to officially launching the course in the coming week or two – it is ten hours of online study over eight modules, self-paced and designed to fit around other commitments, and will teach you how to blend offline and online technologies to reach those affected adversely by gambling and help them on the road to recovery!  Jane will be giving personal one-to-one tutoring to each student in our unique OTI way!

Modules include:Cover TinyTake

  • How do you know if someone has a gambling problem?
  • The theory of problem gambling
  • Working with problem gamblers
  • Working with friends and family
  • Online support for problem gamblers
  • Gaming and internet use for problem gamblers
  • Managing suicide and risk online
  • Using blended technology in a face to face and residential setting

Watch this space for updates, or email jane.fahy@hushmail.com to register your interest!

 

On Being A Columnist

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I’ve been thinking about both my contributors to TILT Magazine and my own role as a columnist recently.  This was inspired by the departure of my good colleague Anne Stokes over at TILT Towers, who has been with us from the inaugural issue right up to the present day – that’s 20 columns submitted for our readers pleasure and education (or, to look at it differently, nearly a whopping 20,000 words!).  Anne’s topic was CyberSupervision, and I doubt we could have found a better UK expert to offer her words of wisdom (not to mention her being a pleasure to work with and her ability to meet deadlines like no other author I have come across in my time as Editor!).

Anne is handing her baton to another of our dear colleagues after the Winter 2014 issue of TILT to Cedric Speyer, another fine example of a CyberSupervisor we are very lucky to have on board, and perhaps with a very different style and passion – so while I am sad to say farewell to Anne, I’m also excited to welcome Cedric.

Our columnists receive no financial gain from their contributions, and nor have I over my years contributing regular columns for other editors.  I do try to be a regular columnist for only one publication at a time because of this (otherwise I can’t afford to feed the cat), but what is it about contributing our expertise to a wider audience that keeps us doing it for free?

Here are some thoughts:

We reach new audiencesCAW

My current regular column is with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy’s Workplace Division ( download it now! 13559_cyberwork CAW Autumn 2014). Not only does my work on Cyberculture and the impact of online services reach a new audience by doing this, I reach people who actively pay for a subscription and so are invested in reading the Journal.  Sure, they may skip over my part in it, but I am sure that the topic will surface in some part of their work one day and cause them to think “oh! I can find out more about this can’t I? – my journal covers it in every edition!”  I also receive a .pdf for my own distribution, as do all our columnists in TILT.

We receive new areas in which to market

Every columnist with a good editor will have a chance to provide the context in which they work in return for their wise words.  My by-line contains details of who I am, what I offer (and where), and how to get hold of me.  Readers of the journal are those involved in or contributing to the emotional and psychological health of people in organisations, including workplace counsellors, trainers, team leaders and welfare staff, occupational psychologists, HR managers and those with an interest in employee counselling services and skills.  How else could I each these people without investing in financial ways of marketing? And if your column makes it to the online version of the journal – as mine does – then that’s a whole new way of increasing your SEO!

We add to our publication lists

We all have a Curriculum Vitae or Résumé to maintain and our columns do just that.  Keep your links fresh from your up-to-date list of publications online and you have a handy resource to disseminate your work without resorting to a scanner or – dare I say it – a photocopier (that is SO 2008!).

Finally – you keep the Editors of the world very happy!

Really you do!  My role as co-Managing Editor of TILT Magazine is a labour of love, for all the reasons I outlined in an earlier post – and my regular columnists make my job 100 times better just by being willing and able to contribute with a cheery email when sending their work.   I am terrible with deadlines, and yet I rarely hear a peep of complaint about that!  So thank you to you all – past, present and future – for keeping me and my readers happier in our work!

🙂

Coaching in the Digital Age

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Sometimes I feel I neglect the coaching part of me! 

OTI_CertifiedCyberCoach_Cover_v1_001

It’s true that the majority of my work tends towards the counselling and therapy side: but am also a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and an IAC Masteries™ Practitioner; maintain strong links with the Coaching Division of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy as their LinkedIn membership officer and Specialist Advisor for Online Coaching; and am also a member of the Association for Coaching (AC) with the UK Chair of the organisation, Gladeana, being on our Faculty. The Online Coach Institute is also an International Association of Coaching (IAC) Coaching Masteries™ Authorized Licensee (having adapted them to online work), and DeeAnna and I are both on the Faculty of the excellent Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT).

I’ve had cause to remember all this during this week because I’ve been working on our new credential – the Certified Cyber Coach course (CCC).  We have offered Online Coaching training as a Specialist Certificate for a while now, but it seemed to me while talking with my coaching colleagues that there is a need for a shorter course that simply introduces you to what is available within the realms of technology to enhance your work, alongside giving you the core information as to how to embrace electronic communication with clients and how to avoid the pitfalls that may lurk in doing so.

So I have built a hybrid course!  Less intense than our Specialist Certificate of 30 hours, but bigger than our basic Introduction to Online Coaching course (which offers 5 hours of learning).

By modelling the course on our popular Certified Cyber Therapist course structure of 15 hours, I’ve been able to include much more than the essentials of online behaviour, ethical considerations, and practicalities of using email, chat, telephone/audio and video with clients.  I’ve included the importance of having a Coaching Strategy for using technology in your work, information on Apps to both to manage practice and for your clients, and the exciting world of how Vision Boards look these days using technology!  I’ve added in valuable learning in taking up online methods for creative writing and the potential of a virtual coaching practice in a 3D environment.  To top all that off, it includes resources to help you plan and blend technological offerings into a rounded coaching practice ready for the client living and working in the digital age.

And, just for fun, the final lesson looks at the benefits that other coaches have found by taking their practice online, losing the daily commute and working more flexibly, and invite you to envision how your future practice will look when your clients are only a click away.

Don’t forget – each person taking the CCC will gain one-to-one mentoring from me to ensure your learning fits your individual needs as a coaching practitioner, whatever field of coaching you are in (including therapist as coach!).

Personally, I can’t wait to get started!  Email me if you fancy a chat about it, or head over the Coaching Courses page to see more!

🙂

CyberSupervision – Updates and Revamps (or what the inside of my head looks like!)

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One of the things that DeeAnna and I joke about being at the top of our technology development wish list is a USB adapter for our brains.  When we plan a course – from one of our smaller special interest modules right up to our 60-hour Specialist Certificates – one of us generally has the entire basic structure and content in our head right from the start.

Of course, then we have to extract that course from our brains and into our training platform, JigsawBox, before we can offer it to our students!  And one of the beauties of the platform is that we can edit the course once finished, meaning that the moment a new resource or updated information about any aspect of the content turns up, we can add it or amend the course within seconds – ensuring that our students only get the most up-to-date information available.  Any course that involves the use of technology needs to have that functionality – the days of emailing out handouts and lessons are long gone.

I’ve just completed the overhaul of our Online Supervision Specialist Certificate: checking links; replacing out of date articles; adding new videos; designing new written assignments… the list of blended technologies we employ in our courses reflect the Online Therapy Institute ethos of blending technologies to better meet the needs of the clients we serve.  Along the way, I’ve restructured the 30 hours to flow better from the introductory definitions, through the ethical considerations, on to the clinical aspects of supervising online, and ending at advanced readings encompassing private practice, internships, one-off supervision models and using avatars in virtual worlds as part of a supervision service.

Sometimes when finishing up a course, I wonder how it got from the inside of my head to the training platform.  And then I realise I am generally staring at one sheet of A4 that shows me.  Look!

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What a mess, huh?  And yet every scribble on that one piece of paper (and I only EVER need one piece of paper) links to everything else in my head around that specific topic, from random thoughts to newspaper articles to online jokes to the academic papers that Google Scholar throws at me every morning.

Sometimes the human brain just stuns me. As Einstein said, “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.”  Of course, he also said that technology has exceeded our humanity, but that’s a point I disagree with anyway 😉

I love technology.  That’s not a secret.  I also love my profession. Slamming those two things together in a coherent and ethically delivered way – not only educating others to advance confidently into the CyberCulture we now live and work in but also mentoring the innovators of the future to ensure the helping professions remain current and relevant in society – is my life’s work.

And if all you need is a pen and a sheet of paper like I often do, with no plug socket or wire in sight, remember that you are still using technology.  Douglas Adams taught me to think that way about chairs back in 1999. And in my world, you don’t get a better teacher than him.

🙂