This year’s theme

For me, joining and working in a therapeutic community in my late twenties was a great adventure – it was challenging to work in this new way, but also a great relief and something that I didn’t know I was looking for. Belonging to and participating in the day-to-day work of truly therapeutic communities and organisations can be an endlessly enriching experience. Both staff and resident members find themselves developing in new ways, becoming more curious, arriving at new understandings of themselves, and through the practice of group-living and shared-responsibility for the therapeutic programme, they come to recognise how much they have to offer to others in the community and beyond.

Therapeutic Communities (TCs) are grounded in theory and practice which has been gathering knowledge and experience for over 80 years. These services were traditionally based in psychoanalytic processes expressed at the social level and were alternatives to traditional psychiatry. TCs engage resident / members as whole persons, with competence and capacity to address their difficulties and histories within groups and communities where peer-support and mutually beneficial relationships are seen as inherently therapeutic.

How are such approaches developing today, and how do they compare with standardised and sometimes manualised models of treatment? We would like to hear about your adventures in theory and practice: your stories, histories, theories and approaches. We want to celebrate therapeutic communities in all their manifestations and all who have worked, lived in and continue to contribute to their development and survival.

Whether you are in a therapeutic community, an enabling environment, a therapeutic childcare setting or aspiring to work in a less medicalised and more relational and value-based way, come and find your place.

This event is designed for those who work with Children and Young People, in Education, Adult Mental Health settings, the Criminal Justice and HMPP or Addictions services, and for anyone who has lived-experience of such settings. We hope that you will recognised that the values of TCTC mean that all people are welcome – people of colour, and those identifying as LGBTQ+ or non-binary, and anyone else who may not have attended our events before. We believe everyone can bring something of value and find value in our community.

Chris Nicholson- Chair