Going Online
After the death of Penny Parks (my wife) in 2020 it was a while before I felt able to pick up the reins of Penny Parks Training and continue Penny’s legacy of Parks Inner Child Therapy (PICT). This I finally did in 2022 and we have made great strides since, finally restarting training in 2023.
In the interim, we have all witnessed the seismic shift in the provision of services to online, including training and even therapy itself – particularly so since Covid. For training, this has obvious benefits for both training provider and student. For the training provider it extends the reach of their potential audience and for the student it makes the training more accessible by cutting out the significant time and cost of travel and accommodation. A win-win situation – except that such a shift also comes with compromises where what is at risk of being lost is that shared experience of being in a room together, of team building and working through the material together, the ability to make a real connection with fellow students with the chats over coffee and lunch together and, perhaps most importantly, building the trust necessary to fully engage where full experiential work is required. It also adds complication to monitoring and assessing each individual student’s progress and grasp of the materials taught.
A distance learning format with full online training is fine for foundation courses where interaction between students is perhaps less critical and the bodies recognising/accrediting the courses will accept the majority, if not all, of the training programme to be delivered online. However, for Advanced Specialist Skills training courses such as PICT, the criteria imposed by the standards bodies are naturally much stricter, and rightly so. Not only is the training more intense, but the interaction, trust and connection between students much more important, particularly with a fully experiential course such as PICT where integrity and student safety are such a key consideration.
Although PICT is all about Change Work, the change of such a highly interactive course as PICT to an online format was never going to be easy, and to be honest, I have resisted it as much through our own desire not to compromise on standards as well as taking into account feedback from past students as to how much they appreciate, and feel necessary, the in-person training was for them. However, the PICT model itself has been continually evolving since its inception by Penny Parks in the 1980s. Now it is time for PICT to more fully encompass new technology in the form of online delivery.
In order to maintain the high standards that are expected of Advanced Specialist Skills recognition that we have attained for PICT, the bodies that underwrite those standards require a minimum level of in-person training – ideally a 50:50 split. After taking every consideration on board, we have modified the course to a hybrid format that we believe provides the best solution from the training, student and standards perspective - maintaining integrity of the course whilst making it more accessible for students.
The new format starting in September 2024 now only requires in-person attendance for the first module (3 days), modules 5 & 6 (combined into 4 days) and the final module, module 10 (2 days). The remaining modules are all 2-day modules delivered live online. In addition, by adding a new module (module 10) this allows us to incorporate some exciting new leadership material that we believe extends the impact of PICT taking it to a new level, completing the full journey from Victim to Champion.
For detailed course information click here
Rod Tallowin
Director
Penny Parks Training Ltd