AMBIT training, consultation and supervision

AMBIT is a team practice, and trainings are only offered to teams or groups of teams, not to individual workers. There is a standardised pathway that teams embarking on AMBIT trainings will follow. Note that all training can be delivered remotely via video conferencing or in person (where COVID-19 policy allows).

• Making an enquiry  – enquiries can be made by email to our AMBIT Programme Officer (ambit@annafreud.org). You will asked to complete a form detailing the nature of your work and the nature of your enquiry and be invited to an engagement call with one of the AMBIT Programme co-leads, or a Lead AMBIT Trainer.

• Initial engagement call – a conversation to help you decide if AMBIT could suit your needs, to discuss training options and for the AMBIT training team to understand the nature of your training needs and the goals for the training.

• Consultation day –  an in-depth exploration of a team or system’s existing strengths and needs, and readiness to change. It used either as a way of deciding whether AMBIT or something else might be a useful approach to those needs or as a preparation for training that helps create the best possible conditions for the training to be helpful. Read more about the consultation day.

• Training starts: All Trainings can be either delivered remotely via video conferencing or in person (where COVID-19 policy allows) either at our centre in London or at your location.

• Post Training Supervision - all trainings include a package of post-training supervisory support tailored to the team or systems needs.

• Attunement to a team’s existing strengths that the training must strengthen, not undermine, and to the specific challenges that the team acknowledges (which will shape the ‘training outcomes’ that a team will define to measure the impact of their training.)

• Core theory: mentalizing and epistemic trust and how these ideas relate to everyday experiences in work. In particular the training stresses the practical application of these ideas in the day to day experiences of work. The theory component in the training is emphasised in the first day of training, and is then referred to through practice and experience in subsequent days. We emphasise that the training is NOT primarily an ‘academic’ presentation, but is more about experience and practice, although the core theories that AMBIT rests on are rooted in research based evidence.

• The subsequent days of training take trainees through a series of practical exercises and techniques that explore and equip them to apply mentalizing in four different areas of work: the direct face to face encounters with clients, the work between team members to help sustain each other’s mentalizing, the work of mentalizing other professionals in the wider multiagency networks that our clients are often involved in, and in the creation and sustaining of the team as a ‘learning organisation’ that can balance evidence based practice with its own practice-based evidence.

• Collaborative learning between team members/trainees is stressed as much as (or more than) ‘didactic’ teaching from the ‘front of the room’.

• Implementation planning: the training pays particular attention to how teams or trainees go on to apply the learning in their work settings after the training has finished, in ways that are most likely to be sustainable and fit the needs of the local context. This includes setting up goals and targets for action post-training, and takes a realistic view of the challenges of implementation.

Commissioned Multi-Team: where a single organisation commissions us to train a number of their own teams/services This can be delivered at Anna Freud, remotely (live video-based training), or locally (to be negotiated)

Commissioned Individual Team: Delivered at Anna Freud, remotely, or locally (to be negotiated). This allows for more tailoring and adaptation of the AMBIT curriculum delivered.

Largescale Locality-wide/Multiagency trainings: The AMBIT Programme has experience of delivering a number of large locality-wide trainings, that involves training multiple workers, from different professional groups, and from different agencies (who are often working with the same clients) as a means to create common language and a shared approach that accommodates different tasks, models and methods. AMBIT has elements of a framework or model of intervention itself, but is also designed to support existing practice models in order to help them to work more effectively.

Contact ambit@annafreud.org to discuss planning locality-wide multiagency trainings.

Bespoke requests: We are very happy to discuss requests for bespoke packages of services. Contact ambit@annafreud.org to arrange an initial engagement call.

The difference between teaching and training

• AMBIT trainings are only for teams and require live group interaction and facilitated team exercises and discussion

• Learning about the theory and practice of AMBIT can be done by individuals, but we will always emphasise that AMBIT is always and only a team practice rather than an individual one.

Monthly AMBIT Community of Practice Zoom ‘Gatherings’ – case/organisational discussions using an AMBIT framework

• Sign up for or Suggest: “topics of interest” for an AMBIT Community of Practice Webinar

• Refresher events for teams/individuals from trained teams

• Video teaching clips: There is a large quantity of free access video material, that is accessible as embedded material in the AMBIT wiki or via the

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Conference appearances, etc (N.B. this may not be not an exhaustive list)

• AMBIT Community of Practice Annual Conference

• Other one-off AMBIT learning events

• Forthcoming presentations of AMBIT at other conferences

Length: Consultation day/half day + 4-day training + supervision package

Consultation day recommended

4-day training - £6,900 (up to 16 people) plus £400 for each additional person up to a total maximum of 30 people

Supervision package recommended

Travel, accommodation and subsistence expenses for 2 trainers - as required

Length: Consultation day/half day + 5-day training + supervision package

Consultation day recommended

5-day training - £10,500 (up to 16 people) plus £625 for each additional person up to a total maximum of 25 people

12 hour supervision package recommended

Travel, accommodation and subsistence expenses for 2 trainers - As required

Length: 2-day training

2-day training - £500 per person (up to 25 people)

Please note: we offer a 10% discount of the person cost – only applicable to commissioned trainings with a minimum of 15 people

Travel, accommodation, and subsistence expenses for 2 trainers - As required

In addition to trainings and teaching, the AMBIT team also conducts consultations to teams or wider services, using the AMBIT framework to help them reflect on their existing strengths and current challenges, and to consider what training needs or other service developments might best serve their overarching mission and objectives.

Nearly all AMBIT Training packages start with an initial day of consultation, to help the AMBIT training team orient and attune themselves to understand the specific local contexts of the team they are training

Consultation days or packages can be helpful as ‘standalone’ interventions for services who may not need or want to commit to AMBIT training. The AMBIT consultants have the experience (and privilege) of having worked closely with hundreds of teams internationally over the last decade and can use this experience and the AMBIT framework as helpful lens to evaluate strengths and possible development opportunities..

Applications for AMBIT consultation packages can be made via ambit@annafreud.org

For AMBIT trained teams a package of supervision comes as part of every training, and buying packages of additional supervision is possible, too. Discuss requests with the AMBIT admin team: ambit@annafreud.org

Supervision packages can be individually negotiated and planned, focusing on any of the below:

• Implementation of a team plan (change management) following AMBIT training

• Group or Individual Casework/Clinical supervision, using an AMBIT frame of reference

• Consolidating learning in relation to training, using active casework and organisational events and processes to create an ‘action learning set’.