International course

A programme offered by the study programmes in SPH and CTO

You are in a mixed group of Dutch students in the second year of their study programme and
foreign students, and one half of the week you follow an SPH programme with SPH students
and the other half a CTO programme with CTO students.
The programme comprises four components that all have as a topic a professional duty with
the accompanying competences.
 

Methodical social work: preparation and analysis

The programme focuses on the first two steps in the methodical cycle: the familiarisation
with social-work methods, target groups and means, including creative media. Besides you
get familiar with the client(s) of your work-placement or work. At the end of the unit of study
you will formulate a request for help. You learn how you have to handle an analysis and
what is necessary to get more insight into the client’s situation. For this you also make use
of play or an artistic/sporting medium.
In your work(placement)place you are going to work with one or more clients. It is important
that you know what you will have to do and which steps you are going to take. Therefore you
dwell on work placement or working institution, the target group in general and the individual
client in particular. You learn how you can see a client, how you can observe a client and
how you can communicate with him/her to get an insight into his/her wishes, needs and
opportunities.
Important in this is that you learn where you are yourself, so that you can make a distinction
between facts and interpretations.
 

Assessing health-need and designing treatment plan
In professional practice you as an arts therapist are confronted with assessing the health
need for arts therapy. Next this health-need assessment will be incorporated in an artstherapy
treatment plan. In order to come to a carefully attuned treatment plan/module you
need deepening medium skills. In this unit of study ample attention is therefore paid to
methodical working methods within the medium of visual arts. These include skills like selfreflection:
you investigate your strengths and weaknesses within the visual arts and you
incorporate them in a self-assessment, where you draw conclusions on your concrete
learning goals. In the visual arts you develop specific skills, e.g. working with clay, that are
attuned to the target group that you write the treatment module for.
Moreover the strength of the medium in historical, cultural and neuropsychological respect is
investigated in lectures.
 

In both programmes each component has been built up along three learning lines:
**the conceptual learning line, where theory is central;
**the integral assignment, where usually work practice is central;
**the skills learning line, where especially much attention is paid to the use of the creative
media and to methodical skills.