CAT Skills course: Relational Formulation and mapping in practice (6 months)

Cost: $2500 AUD plus GST (if in Australia). ($2200 early bird until 12.06.2026)

This 6-month online CAT skills course is designed for clinicians wanting to deepen their relational thinking and formulation skills using Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT).

The course focuses on understanding patterns in relationships, teams, systems, and clinical work, while helping participants develop confidence in using the CAT understanding and mapping tools to formulate complexity collaboratively.

A central part of the course is learning how to formulate not only “about” people or systems, but alongside the person, team, or group you are working with. The course emphasises CAT as a collaborative and relational model that supports shared understanding, reflection, and change.

The course includes:

• Pre-recorded CAT teaching modules and reflective learning activities (approximately 12 hours of content)

• Fortnightly live online mapping and supervision workshops in groups
  (12 × 2-hour workshops across 6 months)

• Opportunities to develop relational formulations of clients, teams, services, or organisational systems

• Practical support in using CAT mapping collaboratively with individuals, teams, and groups

• Access to recorded learning materials throughout the course 

• Regular homework activities and worksheets to help learning 

As part of the programme, each participant will also receive:

• One individual 1.5-hour mapping session with Lee Crothers

In this session, participants may bring:

• a client dynamic

• a team or organisational pattern

• a relational dilemma

• or a repeated pattern they find themselves “pulled into” despite recognising it

These sessions aim to model live CAT-informed formulation and mapping processes in practice, including how therapists and practitioners may become caught within relational patterns themselves.

Sessions will be recorded via Zoom and shared with the learning group as teaching material. Recordings will focus only on the mapping and formulation process itself. Participants are asked to remove or change identifying information, names, and service details wherever possible.

Participants will also have the option to:

• request edits to recordings

• have sections removed

• or choose for their recording not to be shared with the wider group

Recordings will be securely stored using encrypted platforms and used solely for educational purposes within the course.

Watching live formulation work unfold allows participants to observe:

• how relational patterns emerge

• how CAT maps complexity collaboratively

• how practitioners can become pulled into reciprocal roles

• how formulation can be developed alongside others rather than done “to” them

• and how reflection supports recognition, revision, and repair within relationships and systems

This course is suitable for clinicians across mental health, youth work, community services, outreach, private practice, and organisational leadership contexts.

For clinicians considering future CAT practitioner training, this course may also provide a helpful foundation for progressing into the 2-year CAT Practitioner Training pathway accredited through ANZACAT.