About Us

At ECPT, we aim to create a community spirit of engagement, participation, and shared responsibility. We encourage students to self-generate their interests and passions as they develop their knowledge and understanding of Transactional Analysis (TA)
psychotherapy and its integration with other psychotherapy models. We consider the ethos of our training organisation to be developmental, relational, co-creative, and inclusive. We want you to feel supported to learn, reflect, question, evaluate, and grow, both as a developing practitioner and as an individual.

1. Developmental Learning

We see training as a developmental process. You will begin with a foundation of
theoretical understanding and skills practice, and gradually move towards deeper
clinical awareness, theoretical integration, and understanding of the therapeutic relationship. This process culminates in a growing sense of self and professional identity as a therapist. We believe this development is supported through ongoing reflection, assessment, analysis, and critique. Our aim is not only to facilitate you in meeting the required standards for qualification, but also to encourage thoughtful,cethical, and critically reflective practice.

2. Relational and Co-Creative Training

We understand learning as something that happens in relationship: with trainers, peers, supervisors, clients, theory, and self. We encourage open discussion, negotiation, and feedback throughout the learning journey. Your experiences and feedback are important
to us and help us continue to develop and evolve as a training organisation. We do not
see training as something that is simply delivered to students, but as a process that is co-created within our learning community.

3. Learning Through Experience: Safe and Brave Spaces

Our philosophy is built on the idea that you are your own best resource. We value learning that happens through direct experience, reflection, and relationship. Because of this, we know that the safety and structure of the training environment directly impact
how easily and successfully you learn. We address this through our unique training model, the TA Training Pentagon, which balances the different elements of the learning experience.
However, a supportive environment isn’t just about comfort; it requires a brave space. Psychotherapy training is a rigorous, demanding process, and real professional growth
across the course means leaning into areas that might feel uncomfortable. From the perspective of the Pentagon, being open-minded, stepping outside your comfort zone, and taking interpersonal risks with your peers and trainers are fundamental values and
requirements of this training.
Meeting our criteria involves far more than just academic performance. It requires a
willingness to engage in personal reflection, to remain open to process, and to constructively engage with critique and challenge. We hold this rigorous process within
a collaborative framework, ensuring that as we stretch and challenge one another, we actively respect and hold space for cultural heritage, age-related experience, gender
identity, physical accessibility, and cognitive differences.

4. Inclusivity and Belonging

Inclusivity is central to our ethos. We aim to deliver training in a way that creates a
positive and supportive learning environment for each individual. We want you to
succeed, and ECPT has been built with this at its heart. We recognise that each student brings a unique whole-person experience. This includes identity, knowledge, embodiment, context, relationships, culture, history, lived experience and world view. We particularly value Mahmood Ahmad’s WICKET model (2026) as one helpful
framework for thinking about whole-person experience, diversity, and inclusion. At the
same time, our approach is not defined by any single model; it is informed by an integration of relevant frameworks and grounded in a relational, co-creative, and developmental understanding of psychotherapy training. We are committed to working within diversity and to developing our practice so that our training environment is accessible, respectful, and open to everyone.

5. Equity, Diversity, and Individual Learning Needs

Diversity does not mean one shared experience or one shared set of needs. Students
from different backgrounds, age groups, cultures, or neurodivergent profiles may have very different strengths, challenges, and learning preferences. For this reason, we do not believe a one-size-fits-all approach works. We also recognise that understanding your own learning and accessibility needs can be a process of discovery, and you may not know immediately what support or adjustments will be most helpful.
Our TESC Vice-Chair shares her own journey below to show what this looks like in practice within our leadership team. While her narrative focuses on neurodivergence, it reflects our broader approach to navigating the unique, evolving, and sometimes conflicting needs of students across all identities.

A Note on Lived Experience
By Freya, Vice-Chair of the Training and Educational Standards Committee (TESC)

I’m writing this to explain our ethos around neurodiversity. I am writing this as a neurodivergent trainer, who was once an autistic and dyslexic student, and I therefore have some applicable lived experience of training as a neurodivergent person. We at
TESC understand that living with and within neurodiversity does not mean we all have the same experience or needs. It’s in the term diversity, my autistic experience is not the
same as someone else. Due to this, a one-size-fits-all approach is not feasible or applicable in meeting the needs we all have as we go through training.
Let me give you an example to illustrate what this can look like: I read the colour green
much better, and another dyslexic person may get on better with slides that have the
colour red, which would hurt my eyes to read. Which leads to the question: how can we
be accommodating when sometimes accommodations clash? Not only this, I know that understanding our needs as neurodivergent people is a journey. I didn’t come out of my
dyslexia diagnosis instantly knowing how to approach my studies to best suit myself, it
was a process of trial and error. As well as this, our understanding of neurodiversity is ever-evolving, but an understanding we are committed to. Back when I was a psychotherapy student undergoing a different route than what we do here, when I asked for an accommodation, this accommodation wasn’t granted. Not only did I have to battle with my own intrapsychic process to do with shame in terms of needing support, which went against my script at the time, I wasn’t held, accommodated to, and felt dismissed. We will not get it perfect every time, but I can say that we are committed to making sure experiences like that are avoided where we can. We’ve come a long way since then and we know that we have a long way to go. For my dyslexia, I got green glasses to help myself read because I knew that having everything
delivered to me in a green font was not feasible or necessarily right for someone else’s way of learning. We have to work together collaboratively and with collective and individual responsibility so that we can do the best we all can in making this learning journey as best as it can be for you. We are committed to working collaboratively with you to explore what may support your
learning, while also working within the requirements and essential criteria of the
training. Some accommodations may not always be feasible, and at times different needs within the group may conflict. However, we are always open to conversation. We cannot know what we do not know, so we encourage you to speak with us about your needs and experiences. We will listen, take these conversations seriously, and work collaboratively to consider what can reasonably be done. To support this, we are continuing to develop our assessment processes, student
support arrangements, and extension processes to make them more accessible, while
ensuring that students are still able to meet the necessary criteria for qualification. Our
Student Support team, TESC, and the EDI committee (which we invite you to join) are all
actively working on this to ensure our curriculum, physical spaces, and community are inclusive of all cultural backgrounds, ages, genders, disabilities, and neurotypes.

6. Collective and Individual Responsibility

We believe that creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment is a shared
responsibility. ECPT has a responsibility to provide structure, support, and openness to dialogue. Students also have a role in communicating their needs, engaging with the process, and participating in the learning community with care and respect.
Training in psychotherapy can be a transformational experience. Students often learn a great deal about themselves and may go through significant personal growth and
development. This will also be true for others in your learning group. We therefore ask you to approach one another with compassion, respect, and awareness.

Our Commitment

We will not get everything perfect every time, but we are committed to learning,
listening, and improving. In an ever-changing educational landscape, we remain
committed to meeting diverse needs where we can, working collaboratively with
students, and continuing to develop our understanding of inclusion, accessibility,
culture, gender, age, disability, and neurodiversity. We want you to feel able to bring yourself into the learning process, to be supported in your development, and to participate in a training community built on engagement, reflection, compassion, and shared growth.