Your CSTA Guide to Continuing Professional Development

Introduction

As a professional and regulatory body, the CSTA has a responsibility to the public to ensure its members work to an appropriate professional standard. In order to remain as a registered practitioner of the CSTA, it is essential practitioners complete continuing professional development (CPD) each year, that is linked to their own professional needs, as outlined in part 2 of our Standards of Practice guidelines. (A copy of which can be found on the CSTA website under ‘Resources’). Undertaking CPD enables you to maintain and enhance your knowledge, skills and experience, to be nurtured as a practitioner and to practice safely, effectively and legally.

What is the purpose of CPD?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is important for therapists, their clients and the profession as a whole. It is one of the ways therapists hold themselves accountable to clients and the public in general, by taking responsibility for maintaining and improving their professional competence.

The CSTA would like CPD to be an important process of life-long learning for members - a way for practitioners to support their own personal development, their individual clinical practice and their practice of CST as a profession. It also provides opportunities to meet and network with other practitioners and as a way to resource oneself, by taking time out from work to focus on professional growth.

The CSTA’s approach to CPD

The CSTA recognises that CPD requirements need to be: o As simple and as non-prescriptive as possible

Accessible regardless of location
Based on the principles of a reflective practice
Capable of embracing the diversity of the profession

CSTA members are responsible for reflecting on and assessing their own learning needs, planning their own CPD, undertaking formal learning and detailing how this has supported their practice. The CSTA sees reflective practice as an essential part of CPD, which forms a continuous cycle throughout the year:

1. Identifying your learning needs and how you might meet them. You could talk this through with your supervisor, or use a weekly/monthly reflective practice to notice any challenges or particular topics that are regularly coming up.

2. Planning the CPD activities to meet those needs.
3. Evaluating how these activities have helped you in your practice.

To meet the CSTA requirements, members will need to input their CPD information onto their CSTA member’s account, together with any evidence of course attendance or supervision, for review at renewal. There will be space to add why you planned to undertake a particular learning and how that learning has informed your practice.

On members’ CPD pages of their website account, CPD is now divided into these main categories: Core Skills, Specific Interest, Wider Development and Supervision, which are explained below.

1. Core skills

When reflecting on your development, it would be useful to consider the core skills required to be a competent CST practitioner. The CSTA considers these to be some of the key areas of competence:

Clinical Skills

Palpation
Holds
Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology

Listening and reflecting skills

Verbal and non-verbal

Presence

Stillness
Grounding
Embodiment

Working with Trauma

PTSD o Pacing o Safety

Boundaries and Ethics

Professional
Relational (person to person)
Awareness of own process (e.g. transference and counter transference)

Practice Management

Note taking
Business development/marketing/social media o Safeguarding
Legal/data (e.g. GDPR)

CPD courses will no longer be divided into ‘primary’ or ‘secondary’ CPD categories.

Accepted CPD can now include relevant online courses, webinars; podcasts and reading CST- related material as well as training courses; peer group work and supervision (once mandatory supervision has been completed).

For newly qualified members and those still building a regular practice, CPD is expected to focus on the core skills outlined above e.g hands-on CST courses, courses in stillness, grounding and embodiment and trauma skills courses.

2. Specific Interest

For more experienced members, the emphasis for CPD is more likely to be informed by the way your own practice develops over time. This could include specific interests and specialisms such as working with babies and children or chronic or specific health conditions.

3. Wider Development

All members can also consider development of their wider skills, in both personal and professional development, which could include: meditation techniques, counselling skills, embryology or birth process work for example.

4. Supervision

If a member has completed their 8 mandatory supervision sessions, additional supervision can be counted as CPD. Up to 6 Supervision sessions a year can be added as CPD (equivalent to 1 day)

Peer Group Work

CSTA CPD Requirements:

Our minimum requirements for annual CPD are:

Minimum of 12 hours (2 days) per year
If you do a longer course in the current year, up to 12 hours (2 days) may be carried forward to the following year
Evidence of attendance is required for courses, supervision etc
You will need to input details of your CPD onto your member’s account on the CSTA website.

Please refer to the ‘How to Add a New CPD Activity’ document on the website, under Resource Centre/ Guidance/CPD.

On reviewing your CPD, if the CSTA feels that a member needs some guidance around their progress or courses, the Administrator or Registrar may get in touch and ask for further information or give suggestions about alternative learning areas.

If there are extenuating circumstances as to why members have not been able to complete their required hours of CPD, please contact the Registrar at registrar@craniosacral.co.uk prior to renewal to discuss this, so that we can find a way to best support you.

If a member wishes to add Peer Group work as part of their CPD, the theme of the Peer Group meeting will decide which category to put the hours under, for example if the theme of the meeting was ‘working with the sacrum,’ the CPD hours would go under ‘Core Skills’. For more information about Peer Groups, please refer to ‘The Guidance for Local Peer Groups’ document, which can be found on the website under Resource Centre/ Guidance/CPD.

The CSTA expects you to complete a variety of activities, that reflect your development as a Craniosacral therapist. However, as CST is fundamentally a bodywork therapy, this will need to include regular experiential or hands-on work.