LETTER FROM THE FORMER PRINCIPAL – 30th June 2010

Dear All,

As many will know my friend and colleague Joe Griffin and I, along with many others, including our wonderful staff, have devoted the last sixteen years of our lives to offering training in the most effective psychological treatments for helping emotionally distressed people through MindFields College.

We have always run this operation on a shoestring, but in doing so have directly and indirectly helped many tens of thousands of people. It is, therefore, with sincere regrets that I have to inform you that the College can no longer function in the current economic climate and it has gone into liquidation.

There are three main reasons why this has happened:

• Since last November the number of bookings on our courses have reduced considerably, particularly from organisations that need to make savings themselves. The effect on our cash flow was as if a tap were being turned off. The cuts in public spending nationally over the coming years, which we recognise are needed if the country is to recover from the its dire financial predicament, are going to further reduce the availability of funding for training. Because the College has little room for manoeuvre by reducing running costs and fixed overheads, this has put enormous pressure on us which we can no longer carry.

• The administrative burden of running an MA course in Human Givens Psychotherapy with Nottingham Trent University (NTU) has surprised and overwhelmed us.

• As a result of the above our accountant informed us on 28th June 2010 that we were insolvent and had to cease to trading with immediate effect.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this causes all students currently enrolled on any of our training programmes, if we could have avoided this in any way we would have done.

NTU is currently looking into how it can best support those students on the MA programme and they will be contacting individual students in due course.

The future:

The value of the human givens approach to understanding human behaviour, particularly with regards to mental health, education and self-development, means Joe and I, after a short rest, will continue to write and hopefully teach about the approach and will notify you of our intentions as soon as possible.

We would also like to reassure you that the Human Givens Institute continues as a separate organisation to support its members, accredit human givens practitioners and publicise the benefits of the human givens approach and its insights. Human Givens Publishing is also unaffected and will continue producing the journal, and it is still the Institute’s intention to hold its conference later this year.

If you are not already signed up to the HGI’s enewsletter, may I suggest that you do so at: www.hgiforum.org/news.html to keep informed of news regarding the human givens approach.

We would like to thank everyone who has already heard this news for their condolences and offers of ongoing support.

Yours sincerely,

Ivan Tyrrell
Former Principal