Welcome to 2015 and to the new CORE System Trust website.
One of the many aims of this collective blog is to flag up work that is relevant or cognate to CORE. Two journals that are very good resources for psychotherapy research and for CORE in particular are Psychotherapy Research, the journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR), and Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, which is the research journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). While they are both worth scanning regularly, each has a special issue/section that might be of special interest to readers.
The first issue of Psychotherapy Research in 2015 carries a special issue on Building collaboration and communication between researchers and clinicians edited by Louis G Castonguay and Christopher Muran. This enterprise is one that captures the philosophy of CORE and so it is good to have CORE represented in the special issue.
I recall Louis first raising the possibility of contributing an article in this special issue when we were heading down from Sheffield to the Savoy Conference in London in early December 2010. It was in the midst of one of the worst winters and Sheffield was virtually cut off by snow. Louis, Bill and Sue Stiles, and I waded knee-deep through snow from the Kenwood Hotel to Sheffield Station and were fortunate to get one of the few trains out of Sheffield, eventually arriving somewhat late at the conference. As I recall, Louis’s talk was rescheduled to the afternoon but had kept very well on ice and was as good as ever.
In any event, it’s clearly been a long gestation period for this special issue to arrive but there is plenty for folk to assimilate. Specifically, the 2nd article in the special issue focuses on CORE and, in particular, on issues arising from its implementation in Sweden and the UK:
- Holmqvist, R., Philips, B., & Barkham, M. (2015). Developing and delivering practice-based evidence: Observations, tensions, and challenges. Psychotherapy Research, 25, 20-31. DOI: 1080/10503307.2013.861093
The article is freely available to members of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) or through university libraries that carry a subscription. If these fail, email me (m.barkham@sheffield.ac.uk) and I will forward a copy.
On a similar theme, the September 2014 issue of Counselling and Psychotherapy Research carried a special section on Practice-based Research Networks. There is a small collection of 5 articles that includes a brief overview of practice-based research networks. As an aside, in researching the introduction to this special section I discovered the pioneering work of Will Pickles – check him out – absolutely fascinating.
Anyway, there are two articles in the section that incorporate work using different versions of CORE. One is an article on individualized patient progress system incorporating CORE-5:
- Sales, C.M.D., Alves, P.C.G., Evans, C., Elliott, R., & On Behalf of Ipha Group (2014) The Individualised Patient-Progress System: A decade of international collaborative networking. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 14, 181-191, DOI: 10.1080/14733145.2014.929417
The other is an article using the YP-CORE in schools:
- Cooper, M., Mcginnis, S., & Carrick, L (2014) School-based humanistic counselling for psychological distress in young people: A practice research network to address the attrition problem. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 14, 201-211, DOI: 1080/14733145.2014.929415
Have a read and, again, if you have difficulties accessing the articles, email me (m.barkham@sheffield.ac.uk).
Happy reading and Happy 2015. With Tottenham beating Chelsea 5-3 on New Year’s Day, the signs are already promising!
Michael