Arts Therapist

On an arts therapist apprenticeship you’ll use art, drama or music to carry out therapy interventions.

Arts therapists work in various settings, including the NHS, local governments, the voluntary or commercial sector, hospitals, clinics, education, shelters, hospices, and prisons.

You’ll use art, theatre, or music to offer therapeutic therapies to improve a person’s mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being.

If you practise as an arts therapist, you are both an artist and a psychological therapist.

You may work with clients of all ages with a wide range of difficulties, impairments, or diagnoses, such as emotional, social, behavioural, or mental health problems, learning or physical disabilities, injuries, life-limiting diseases, neurological disorders, or medical illnesses.

Depending on the client’s needs, art therapy sessions may be provided individually or in groups. In addition, you will provide and receive ongoing managerial, clinical, and professional supervision and support while working with your team.

What you’ll learn

On an arts therapist apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Manage a workload while adhering to legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities and maintaining professional registration.
• Make and maintain a safe environment.
• Maintain confidentiality in all areas of your career while considering the therapeutic context, environment, and legal limitations.
• Use expert judgement while taking personal responsibility for your decisions.
• Proactively investigate and find creative, practical solutions to problems.
• Make psychological assessments and choices by gathering information about the client’s current issues, what causes, exacerbates, or perpetuates them, and how therapy may help or harm.
• Conduct and record a thorough, sensitive, and lengthy assessment using your specialised skills to conceptualise and solve complex problems with numerous interacting factors.
• Work with and respond to complex physical and mental health problems critical to the client and the therapy.
• Engage with clients with co-occurring and complex problems so that their treatment experience is constant.
• Use your expertise in art, theatre, or music, as well as your psychological and therapeutic talents, to develop and assess a regular formulation of the client’s problems in collaboration with the client.
• Use therapeutic skills and technical expertise in art, theatre, or music to enable the client to engage in the creative form.
• Choose appropriate techniques, equipment, or skills from a medium for the treatment session (such as art, drama, or music).
• Use arts, psychological knowledge, and interpersonal skills to help the client become more aware of their thoughts and feelings, reflect on them, and their relationships and behaviour.
• Use arts, psychological understanding, and interpersonal skills to help the client overcome barriers.
• Effectively communicate with others involved in the client’s care and, when appropriate, include them in decision-making.
• Participate in a collaborative assessment of their growth with the client.
• Make responsive and appropriate adjustments to the treatment plan as needed.
• Assess the effectiveness of practice via evaluation, auditing, and record keeping.
• Make use of the most recent safeguarding and risk management techniques and processes.
• Work as a member of a multidisciplinary team inside your organisation and as a member of a broader health and social care team outside your organisation.
• Help, train, supervise, and consult with colleagues.
• Consider, analyse, and expand your psychological and arts-based practice while encouraging others to do the same.

Entry requirements

You’ll usually need:

• Proficiency in art, drama or music demonstrated by a degree or experiential equivalence. Must be able to communicate in English to the standard equivalent of level 7 of the International English Language Testing System, with no element below 6.5
• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this before taking the end-point assessment.

Assessment methods

The End Point Assessment comprises two distinct assessment methods: 

• Professional Discussion underpinned by a portfolio of cases
• Presentation of practice  

Restrictions and requirements

You’ll need to:

• pass enhanced background checks, as you may be working with children and vulnerable adults

Duration, level, subjects and potential salary upon completion

Apprenticeship standard

More information about the Level 2 Abattoir Worker Apprenticeship standard can be found here.

Apprenticeship end point assessment

For more information about the End Point Assessment Process, please read the Institute of Apprenticeships’ information page.