Professor Andrew Reeves
Professor
Biography
I am Professor of Counselling Professions and Mental Health at the University, a Registered Social Worker, an Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist, a Senior Registered Coach and an Accredited Coach Supervisor. Additionally, I am a Senior Fellow of Advance HE, a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and an Associate Affiliate Professor at the University of Malta. I sat on the 2021 QAA Benchmark Standards Group for Counselling and Psychotherapy and have acted as External Examiner at several HE institutions, including the Universities of Leeds, Abertay, Salford, Leeds Beckett, City College Thessaloniki (Greece), Malta and Manchester. As a social worker I worked in several fields, including child protection, vulnerable adults and adult mental health. I worked as an Approved Practitioner (Mental Health Act) where I undertook statutory assessments at mental health crisis for hospital admission, and also worked in a 24-hour mental health crisis team. I additionally delivered groups and individual therapy, as well as broader care planning assessments, to adults with severe mental health distress. As a therapist I have worked in a range of practice settings, including schools, the third sector and independent practice. I was Senior Counsellor at the University of Liverpool Counselling Service for nearly 20-years, I was a Trustee of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) for 6 years, and Chair of the Board for 5 years. I work in a consultative capacity with the Executive of the Coaching Division of BACP, as well as being External Consultant to the re-mapping of BACP's Ethical Framework in the Counselling Professions. I have additionally delivered training and consultancy to a range of major charities, including Samaritans, Relate, CALM, the Listening Place, Charlie Waller Trust and Jonathan's Voice. I have published extensively across number journal and practitioner articles, book chapters and have additionally published several key texts, including An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice (Sage, 3rd Edition), Counselling Suicidal Clients (Sage), Working with Risk in Counselling and Psychotherapy (Sage), Working with Self-Injury (Hodder) and Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action (with Prof Tim Bond, 5th Edition, Sage) and the Handbook of Individual Therapy (with Prof Windy Dryden, 6th Edition, Sage) I have just completed a book with Prof Lynne Gabriel, Navigating Relational Ethics in Day-to-Day Practice (Routledge), as well as being Series Editor for Essential Issues in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Innovative Approaches to Ethics in the Counselling Professions (with Prof Lynne Gabriel), and Working Together (with Prof John McLeod and Julia McLeod). I am particularly interested in the developments in coaching practice, when delivered in combination with therapeutic approaches through a pluralistic lens and am developing my writing interest in this area.
Teaching and Supervision
I have worked at the University since 2015, where I have delivered training on the MA in Counselling Studies and the BA (Hons) in Counselling Skills. My primary teaching responsibilities at the University are on our two professional doctorates in the Division, the DProf in Counselling and Psychotherapy and the DProf in Psychological Trauma. These two programmes are delivered online, the first two years as a taught programme, and the second two years and onwards as a research programme, leading to a doctorate. These programmes interest students internationally and in the UK, with a background in counselling, psychotherapy, trauma and other health-related professions as well as management. These are successful programmes with many students already having graduated with their doctorate from the University. I am also supervisor for a number of PhD students in counselling, psychotherapy and psychological trauma, whose research interests are varied, including, parental support following child death, youth justice, the impact of Covid-19, chronic pain and its impact on self-concept. Again, our doctoral programmes for PhD are very successful, with high success rates over the last few years. Our PhD and DProf students, taken together, represent one of the UK's largest doctoral cohorts in counselling, psychotherapy and psychological trauma, ensuring the University maintains its reputation for teaching, practice and research excellence in our discipline. Beyond the University I have delivered practitioner-based training to over 30,000 professionals over a 25-year period. Including counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers, teachers, psychologists, nurses, general practitioners, psychiatrists and others, my teaching has focused on ways of working therapeutically with suicide risk in helping relationships, as well as work around self-injury and self-harm, ethics, general mental health areas and men's mental health.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Following deaths of two clients through suicide during my own training in social work and then as a therapist, I began my interest in research and practice-based evidence to inform ways of working effectively with such risk for helping professionals. My first research study explored the experiences of counsellors who work with clients at risk of suicide. This then led to further studies, which considered how risk is taught on counsellor and psychotherapy training programmes in the UK, ways in which suicide is talked about in the therapeutic relationship, and in the development of a one-day training programme for trainee and qualified counsellors and psychotherapists to help them develop dialogic-based strategies for talking to clients about risk in a way embedded in the helping relationship. I have undertaken several service evaluations, including of a suicide crisis intervention service and, latterly, a suicide bereavement service. I have been involved in service evaluation using routine outcome measures in practice and am currently involved in the Research Group for the Pluralistic Practice Network. I am particularly interested in pluralistic approaches to research, and how research can be effectively co-produced with those involved in research through collaborative engagement in both research design and the interpretation of outcome and impact. I am currently involved in a study looking at definitions of 'therapeutic coaching', as they are used in the UK - in collaboration with a professional association - to help inform future practice, theory and research in coaching when delivered by a therapy trained practitioner.