Counsellors & Pastoral Carers
Footnotes is a particularly useful set of strategies that work for professional counsellors and those who have a pastoral component to their work. These strategies can meet people at each stage of their process. They are useful in a one-to-one counselling session, or as a workshopping activity where two or more people are gathered.
Footnotes also works very well for individuals who are preparing for support with a counsellor or therapist; those who are making a decision in the first instance about whether they want to seek help from a counsellor. Therefore, potentially before a person reaches the need for counselling or therapy, they are able to self-manage their understanding of their emotional circumstances.
Applications
Individuals needing emotional support and post-trauma recovery benefit greatly from the overlapping quality of Footnotes. A grid that doesn’t need to be straight to the point can open the door gently, sensitively and confidentially to vital follow-up strategies that really help an individual to move on with the support being offered. For example, a collection of grids that might be introduced together is: the ‘Hopes and Dreams Grid’, where an individual is always reminded of the future and the things that are positive in their life, making sure that they never spiral downwards into negative thoughts and low self-esteem; the Perspective Grid and the Dialogue Grid. These can be brought alongside to enable even the quietest and most withdrawn individual to embark on the process of communicating their situation; initially to themselves and then, in due course, to others who can support them.
Footnotes can be really supportive in preventing unhelpful behaviours and restoring preferred responses in a patient, for example with those suffering from self-harm, anorexia or other related diagnoses.
The Footnotes tool can be used for assessment, for gaining perspective, for planning, for dialogue, and for communication. It provides a safe place to store personal and private ideas, as well as helps people look to and plan for the future.
Behaviour management
Footnotes offers helpful strategies where counselling and behaviour management support meet. Please visit our ‘Behaviour Management’ section for more information about using Footnotes as a tool to help facilitate positive behavioural change and management.
Policy making
If you’re interested in the policy side of counselling and pastoral care, please visit our ‘Policy Makers‘ section to see how Footnotes can support in this arena.
These are a selection of some of the grid modules available ..
To find out about the modules that cover these topics, and many others, visit our grids page.
Training
Training is available from all perspectives of pastoral care or counselling, from practitioners, to patients, parents, recipients and colleagues. It can take place in an auditorium or in your living room, via conferences, lectures, workshops, family sessions, or one-to-one online tutorials. You can find out more about what it means to be a visual multilayered thinker, learn in depth about specific Footnotes strategies that take your fancy, or even qualify as a facilitator of Footnotes, enabling you to work as an instructor in a variety of settings. These strategies are highly relevant to pastoral and counselling work but can also be applied in many other fields as well.
To find out more about the various training options we offer, ranging from one-off sessions to a longer programme of support, visit this page.
Referrals
If you would like to refer anyone for individual Footnotes support or intervention, visit this page.
Consultation
Oliver West, creator and founder of Footnotes, offers visual multilayered thinking (VMT) awareness support, Footnotes consultation and bespoke training with you or your organisation. This could be in areas such as policy making, curriculum creation and management support, assessment strategies, and learning or working environment development.
For more information visit this page or get in touch to book a consultation.
Public Speaking & Motivational Awareness
You can also invite Oliver to speak at any conference or event that you are organising.
For more information visit this page or get in touch to book Oliver.