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Motivational Interviewing with Children and Adolescents.
Motivational Interviewing with Children and Adolescents is a 3-day, APT Accredited evidence-based training course designed for professionals working with young people in mental health, social care, education, and related fields. This course is delivered by APT (The Association for Psychological Therapies), a leading provider of mental health training across the UK and Ireland. Over 120 NHS Trusts and all major independent healthcare providers use APT courses.
This is the only APT-accredited Motivational Interviewing training specifically designed for children and adolescents, and includes ongoing access to a comprehensive library of downloadable clinical resources, worksheets, and reference materials post-course. It can also be completed as part of The APT Diploma for working in Child & Adolescent Mental Health.
Who is this MI course for?
This course is suitable for professionals who work directly with young people and want to develop or deepen their skills in Motivational Interviewing:
- Individual clinicians (e.g. psychologists, nurses, social workers) working one-to-one with young people in inpatient or community settings.
- Whole teams looking to embed a consistent, collaborative, and motivational approach across their service.
Attendees often include:
- Mental health nurses.
- Child and adolescent psychologists.
- Psychiatrists.
- Social workers.
- Youth workers.
- Occupational therapists.
- Other professionals working in CAMHS, schools, early intervention services, and youth offending teams.
Course overview
Motivational Interviewing is a structured, evidence-based approach to helping people resolve ambivalence and commit to positive change. This course applies MI principles specifically to children and adolescents, addressing the challenges of working with younger clients who may feel conflicted about change or be influenced by caregivers.
Drawing on the most recent edition of Miller & Rollnick’s work, this training focuses on:
- Building rapport and engaging young people.
- Exploring and resolving ambivalence.
- Generating ‘change talk’ and strengthening commitment.
- Applying MI to issues like substance misuse, adherence to medication, diet and health behaviours, school engagement, and more.
It also explores how MI links with Prochaska & DiClemente’s Stages of Change model, and how to continue developing your MI skills after the course.
What you will learn:
Topics include:
- What Motivational Interviewing is – and what it is not.
- The spirit of MI: collaboration, compassion, acceptance, and evocation.
- OARS skills: Open questions, Affirmation, Reflective listening, and Summarising.
- Helping young people identify meaningful goals (including managing parent/guardian expectations).
- Eliciting and responding to change talk.
- Avoiding common traps in early engagement.
- Working skilfully with sustain talk and ambivalence.
- Building hope and confidence.
- Planning and strengthening commitment to change.
- Integrating MI with other approaches.
- Applying MI across a range of presenting issues in youth work and child and adolescent mental health.
- Developing your MI skills post-training.
What this course will help you do:
By the end of this course, you will:
- Understand and be able to apply Motivational Interviewing techniques with children and adolescents.
- Feel confident working with ambivalence and low motivation in young people.
- Know how to generate change talk and reduce resistance.
- Be equipped to help clients plan realistic and meaningful changes.
- Know how to offer advice in a way that supports autonomy.
- Be able to strengthen self-efficacy and commitment in young clients.
You’ll also receive downloadable tools and resources to support your practice after the course.
Accreditation and certification
- On completion, you gain Level 1 APT Accreditation in Motivational Interviewing with Children and Adolescents.
- You'll receive a certificate of completion.
- You can access an optional online exam to upgrade to Level 2 APT Accreditation.
- Accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable.
- You also gain lifetime registration as having attended the course, which includes continued access to the course materials.
APT accreditation is recognised and valued: over 150,000 professionals have completed APT courses.
Booking is easy...
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Quick Links
❯ Motivational Interviewing Courses
❯ Motivational Interviewing, & how to use it effectively
❯ Motivational Interviewing for Children & Adolescents
Feedback Ratings.
We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last ten runnings of this course, which are updated periodically.*
Face-to-Face
Presentation: 98%
Relevance: 96%
Online Live
Presentation: 95%
Relevance: 97%
* This is a new course. The above feedback is taken from the original course it is based on: Motivational Interviewing, and how to use it effectively.
Reviews.
APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments our Motivational Interviewing courses have received.
"Brilliant. Approachable, clear, kept me motivated for 3 days (an impossibility!). Best course I've been on in 18 years on the job."
"I feel that this has been the best training course I have been on so far in my professional career in terms of its relevance to my current practice and enhancement of my existing skills."
* This is a new course. The above feedback is taken from the original course it is based on: Motivational Interviewing, and how to use it effectively.
