TALKWORKS Operational and Professional Lead, Sarah, presents at the BABCP annual conference

In July 2024, Sarah Goff from the TALKWORKS Central Team, presented at the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies annual conference at the University of Manchester. The theme was Catalysing Change: Ideas to Impact, with a focus on sharing new developments and advances in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and how we mobilise these into our practice. Below, Sarah shares her experience of attending the conference and how the presentation went:

"One of the symposia for the Wednesday afternoon session was our presentation on Prolonged Grief Disorder in NHS Talking Therapies. The symposia was convened by Barney Dunn (University of Exeter) to enable us to illustrate an introduction to the Prolonged Grief Disorder model of therapy (PGDT), the outcome data from 100 patients that had been through the pathway in TALKWORKS and a clinical case example. It was a team approach with four of us presenting including myself, our initial supervisor in PGDT and two University of Exeter PhD students who have been involved with the PGDT research.

The 1 ½ hour presentation was very well received by a packed audience, with not a free seat in the house! The combination of talks made for a powerful presentation, with clear evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention by the data presented, which was illustrated well by the case example and some qualitative data/feedback from patients.

I would like to thank all the PGDT therapists across TALKWORKS, the supervisors and the administrative support that we have in place. Together this provides a very strong, unique offering in an NHS-TT service, delivering an incredibly valuable intervention to many. It certainly was a day to remember and I feel proud to have been able to represent the service and report on positive developments within the NHS."

You can learn more about the Prolonged Grief Disorder therapy that we can offer here at TALKWORKS on our website.

If you are age 18+ and living in Devon (outside Plymouth) and would like to refer yourself to TALKWORKS for support, please fill out our online self-referral form or speak to a member of the team by calling 0300 555 3344 (phone lines are open Monday to Friday from 9am – 4:45pm).