Click on the options below to find out more about the different Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that we support. Some SIGs are for ACAT members and/or Friends only. Others are more broadly open. You can browse through information about the differ SIGs by clicking on the headings below.
At our meetings we discuss and describe how we have been using CAT in our work and explore various issues that arise. This gives each of us a chance to think about creative ideas and problem solving, as well as exchange useful resources.
We have worked on various projects, written position papers and engaged in contributing to the literature. We have been very active in promoting accessibility of therapy to people with an intellectual disability.
This group has started to meet using Microsoft Teams which is the most versatile and convenient, environmentally sustainable and manageable platform/approach for people who may be so geographically dispersed.
I anticipate that we will be able to meet in person, as historically the ID conferences have been well attended and fostered long standing professional and personal relationships.
Both ACAT members and Friends, and non-members as long as they are in regular CAT supervision.
Emma Chorlton
Complete your details on the CAT and Intellectual Disabilities SIG contact form through this link.
Welcome to the Forensic CAT Special Interest Group.
If you work in forensic services and are interested in learning more about a relational model, you may want to consider joining our special interest group. In the forensic CAT special interest group we are interested in connecting with others and creating dialogue about working relationally. This may include exploring the benefits and challenges of offering a relational therapy in a forensic context. Or it may be about considering what a CAT model can offer to support teams and systems. We believe CAT is well placed to support clinicians in both developing and working with a relational understanding of risk and offending as well as helping to develop an integrated way of understanding otherwise complex dynamics.
We hope to connect people across different forensic settings and contexts and to support collaboration across a range of developments and research in this area. We also feel there is much from the forensic field which is relevant to other clinical areas too, for example working in systems and reflective practice and so we welcome those who are not from a forensic background.
The CAT & Forensic Services SIG meets quarterly online
This group is open to all those working in Forensic Services. This may include CAT practitioners as well as those interested in learning about the model. You do not have to be an ACAT member to join this group. We encourage all members to participate and share their experiences and learning so as a group we can learn from each other.
Jenny Marshall
Complete your details on the CAT and Forensic SIG contact form through this link.
We hope to add more information about the CAT and Neurodivergence Special Interest Group soon.
Emma Chorlton
Complete your details on the CAT and Neurodivergence SIG contact form through this link.
Couples work is a growing area within the world of therapy and feels particularly relevant, and suited to CAT, being such a relational model.
This is a special interest group for those interested in sharing their experience of CAT-informed couples work or those members interested in developing their practice within this area. As a new SIG for 2025, it will hopefully open up a space to think together about how CAT can be developed when working with couples.
The group will initially meet once a month remotely, on zoom, on the second Monday of the month between 6 and 7.30pm. As the shape of the group develops and forms we may adjust the frequency within which we meet and the times. The first meeting took place in January 2025.
ACAT members who are either qualified CAT therapists (Practitioners and Psychotherapists) or trainee CAT Practitioners
Karen Spencer
Complete your details on the CAT Couples SIG contact form through this link (for ACAT members only).
A forum for CAT Supervisors to share thoughts, ideas and news regarding CAT supervision.
Annual ACAT Trainers and Supervisors event. (Details will be listed on the ACAT Events pages.)
All CAT supervisors and trainee CAT supervisors.
Jason Hepple
As therapists, supervisors, or trainers, we are all making increasing use of technology in our work. This brings both risks and opportunities which can be explored. This is a group for those interested in sharing their experience of technology assisted supervision, training or therapy, and a forum to explore the different dimension that using technology brings to the work.
The original CAT-‘TAST’ (Technology Assisted Supervision and Training) group began early in 2019 and organically evolved into CAT-‘TASTT’ to encompass Technology Assisted Therapy.
It has covered diverse topics including the impact of technology on our work, on the therapeutic relationship, and on communication. New topics can be suggested by members and will include thinking about the considerations needed when working in a trauma informed way.
The group was re-launched in late 2024 after a short break and welcomes new members. It meets periodically throughout the year (bi-annually as a minimum) online on Zoom, a free encrypted web-conferencing platform. You will need to have access to a pc or iPad or mobile phone, and good WiFi connection. The rest will be across the ether...
You can join the CAT-TASTT SIG if you are an ACAT member qualified in CAT or currently training in CAT.
Cal Nield: Having completed a diploma in Online Counselling and Psychotherapy and having enjoyed the role of facilitating seminars for IRRAPT trainees online, I have an interest in sharing experience, spreading information and exploring good practice, in this rapidly expanding area. If you wish to join I look forward to being in touch soon. Please complete your details through the form at the next link.
Complete your details on the CAT-TASTT SIG contact form through this link (for ACAT members only).
The Climate and Ecology Crisis Special Interest Group is an ACAT and ICATA special interest group looking to bring CAT practitioners together to share our experiences of the crisis . Meetings provide a space to connect around individual and collective trauma, emotions and ideas, Through these connections we create opportunities for understanding, and action arising from this The special interest group is seeking to be a support group, a space for applications of CAT understanding and practice to responses to the Climate and Ecological Crisis,and a means of looking outwards across the field of psychology, psychotherapy and mental health.
We arrange online meetings scheduled for the early morning to make it possible for colleagues to join from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and other time zones.
All ACAT and ICATA members and Friends are welcome.
There is an open group of co-ordinators: Rabhya Dewshi, Jackie Edwards, Reem Ramadan, Nick Barnes, Tim Sheard, Steve Potter, and Matthew Kemsley
By “embodied CAT” we mean sensing and noticing together with our patients or clients what is happening in the body as well as the mind, both theirs and ours, and using this to develop the capacities to regulate, process and make sense of emotions, predispositions, impulses, thoughts and beliefs. The focus is on the states and patterns of experience and behaviour identified with patients as underlying the key issues and problems they need to address, how they are triggered and how their response affects others and themselves.
We see how essential it is for us as therapists to understand how unmet needs in early attachment relationships and varying degrees of trauma of all kinds, both in early development and in later life, affect the embodied mind and the acquisition of these capacities. We are then better at enabling people to engage in the relationship with us and have the experiences they need in that relationship for both healing and capacity development.
For this we see the need to integrate what we can learn from neurobiology into our practice and be guided by the latest research into how the brain and mind develop and change in relationship to other embodied minds in a social context and the wider environment, and how this is informing the aims and processes of psychotherapy, and CAT in particular, as shown by good research and leading practitioners. This can include identifying key principles and practices in the joint regulation and processing of emotion, and in memory reconsolidation, common to all the main therapy modalities and perhaps integrating them into CAT and combining CAT with other therapies such as EMDR, and those described by Bessel van der Kolk.
We share our experience and findings in short papers and in workshops within ACAT and more widely, and in reviews of books and presentations. Where relevant, ACAT's Training Committee can use reviews by us to collect bibliographies and links on the internet to papers, podcasts or videos of presentations both for CAT trainees and for CAT therapists who want to update their learning in this area.
Currently we meet online around 3 times a year, and these sessions are recorded in part for sharing with other members of the SIG. We also meet in person locally or in London. We see people working in twos and threes or small groups for specific purposes, such as developing a presentation and discussion, together with activities, or papers, podcasts or video presentations.
If you have an interest in this area, and some experience and questions which you would like to share and explore, please contact us. This is open to all members of ACAT and others who may be invited by members for specific sessions. We link with other SIGs such as learning difficulties and special needs, and those working with different neurological conditions from birth, through injury, disease or ageing and loss of functions.
John Bristow
Complete your details on the Embodied CAT and Trauma SIG contact form through this link (for ACAT members only).
This group's aim is to meet, share, discuss and explore innovative ideas and effective ways of working in relation to diversity and difference.
This will be an opportunity to think about some of the structural ‘isms’ that operate at various levels, both individual and organisational and the impact of this in our clinical work. We as a group could set up objectives, plan projects for the future, with the aim of raising awareness, offering support, training and feedback to the Committees within ACAT.
The group meets once every four months (three times per year) online using Zoom.
The Inequality and Diversity SIG welcomes all ACAT members and Friends.
Jessie Emilion
Complete your details on the Inequality and Diversity SIG contact form through this link (for ACAT members and Friends only).
We are a group of clinicians mostly working in community or inpatient perinatal settings. We could see the importance and benefits of using CAT in a perinatal setting but we were often working in isolation within our teams. We want to share these experiences, learn from others and work towards creating a stronger research base for using CAT in a Perinatal setting.
We meet every 2 months on a Tuesday 1-2pm over Microsoft Teams.
The group is open to anyone working within the perinatal field interested in CAT. We have a mixture of CAT supervisors, CAT practitioners, CAT practitioner trainees and also clinical psychologists without a formal qualification who use the model regularly. We actively encourage new members and everyone is welcome.
Dr Cassia O’Prey
Complete your details on the Perinatal CAT SIG contact form through this link.
A special interest group for anyone using CAT in physical health settings with patients, carers and staff members.
We have previously met each year for a one day in person event. We hope to introduce this again and add some online events also.
Anyone with some CAT training who is interested in how it can be used in physical health settings. You do not have to be an ACAT member to join this group.
Alison Jenaway
Complete your details on the PhysCAT SIG contact form through this link.
Rewild yourself rewild your practice.
Nick Barnes, Abi Tarran-Jones and Amanda Copeland launched the Wild CAT and Nature Based Practice SIG in 2024 - a special interest group with a first immersive nature event in the Scottish Highlands.
The key ideas are that nature connection is essential for our own emotional wellbeing as therapists, and we can talk all day about the benefits of vitamin N.
We also encourage that as therapists we can integrate CAT with nature approaches to benefit ourselves, our clients, our communities and the natural world.
The group meets quarterly to align with the seasons.
We are running a second residential event in September 2025 in Derbyshire. (Details of this event will be listed on the Non-ACAT Events page)
The Wild CAT and Nature Based Practice SIG is open to:
Amanda Copeland, Abi Tarran-Jones and Nick Barnes
Complete your details on the Wild CAT and Nature Based Practice SIG contact form through this link.
Youth CAT is a special interest section for people working with CAT with young people and families. CAT with these groups can take many forms and we welcome that diversity. Youth CAT SIG is a forum for sharing ideas and to enable people working with CAT in this area to be able to contact others with similar interests.
Several Youth CAT SIG members contributed as editors or chapter authors to a 2024 publication on Working Relationally with Young People: A Cognitive Analytic Approach to Connecting One to One, with Families and Across Communities
We hold regular online meetings via Zoom.
Professionals with an interest, and any level of experience in, CAT with young people. You do not have to be an ACAT member to join this group.
Nick Barnes, Amanda Copeland and Samantha Hartley
Complete your details and reasons for contacting the Youth CAT SIG through this link.
