Nurture · Play · Structure
A Therapeutic Model
Nurture • Play • Structure Clinical Supervision
Two six-week training series for clinicians.
Chapel Hill or online, Tuesdays 5:00–7:00 pm. Six clinicians to a group.
Most training in a therapeutic model happens in a conference room, in one day, and is gone by the following week. These groups are the other thing. Six to ten clinicians, two hours a week, six weeks — working the Nurture · Play · Structure model with your own clients, with the clinician who developed it.
You bring live case material every session. The group formulates it in NPS terms and works the intervention. Between sessions, you use one worksheet with a real client and write a short note on what happened, so the model reaches your practice before the next meeting rather than after the series ends.
Two series run back to back. You can take one, or both.
If you are an LCMHC Associate -
Each series is twelve countable hours of group clinical supervision. Both series is twenty-four — nearly the entire twenty-five hours North Carolina permits toward the hundred you need, and hours you can only spend once.
These groups supplement your individual supervision rather than replacing it. Keep your primary supervisor; those hours are the seventy-five. Group hours count only under a supervision contract approved by the North Carolina Board, and we complete and file one together before your first session.
If you are fully licensed -
The same seat, as clinical consultation. No hours to count and nothing to report — you come to learn the model and to work your own cases with it.
Years in practice are welcome and useful. A group is stronger for having clinicians in it who have seen more, and associates learn as much from a seasoned colleague working a case out loud as they do from the curriculum.
In person or online -
You can join in the Chapel Hill office at 1777 Fordham Blvd., Suite 204, or attend virtually. The group runs the same either way — the same casework, the same worksheets, the same two hours. Choose whichever you can commit to for six consecutive weeks.
Cost -
$50 per session. $300 for a six-week series.
Pay in full before the first session, or half at session one and half at session four.
Board approval required -
Group supervision hours count toward North Carolina licensure only under a supervision contract between you and me that has been approved by the NC Board of Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselors. If you are joining to accrue hours, we complete that contract together and submit it before the series begins. Hours accrued before the Board approves the contract cannot be counted.
Because Board approval takes time, contracts for the Part One cohort must be submitted by Friday, October 9, 2026. If you are counting hours, book your consult before the end of September, so we have room to get the paperwork through.
Part One — Basics and Fundamentals
November 3 – December 8, 2026 · Tuesdays, 5:00–7:00 pm · No prerequisite
One complete pass through the model. Nurture, Play, and Structure, and the claim that gives NPS its shape — that the three are built in an order, and that a life built in reverse produces rigidity and obligation rather than meaning. By the last session, you can hear the three domains in what a client is already telling you, say which one is thin, and defend the order you would build in.
Week 1 — The Frame and the Order
Week 2 — Nurture: The Four Needs
Week 3 — Play: What Do I Want?
Week 4 — Structure: Expression, Not Control
Week 5 — When the Order Reverses
Week 6 — Formulation and Close
Part Two — Couples and Relationships
January 12 – February 16, 2027 · Tuesdays, 5:00–7:00 pm · Part One, or equivalent familiarity
The model applied to two people at once. Most of the NPS worksheet library is relational, and this is where it lives — the Relationship Triangle, the Bridge Model, intimacy and attraction, agreements built from capacity rather than prohibition, and therapeutic separation held as a clinical structure rather than a failure.
Week 1 — The Relationship Triangle and TMER
Week 2 — The Bridge Model
Week 3 — Nurture Between Two People
Week 4 — Intimacy and Attraction
Week 5 — Agreements Built From Capacity
Week 6 — Meetings, Separation, and Close
How a session runs -
Every session is two hours and runs the same way.
The first thirty minutes are teaching — one concept, with the worksheets that belong to it, handled in the room before anyone uses them with a client.
The middle hour is live casework. One member presents: five minutes of history uninterrupted, two minutes on what the client came in for and what you think is actually happening, then the group. Every member presents at least twice per series.
The last thirty minutes are integration — what this changes in your caseload this week, and what you bring back.
The group works through the full NPS worksheet library across the twelve weeks. Each week one worksheet goes home to be used with a live client, with a short written note on what happened.
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