Driven by a strong mutual desire for support and the sharing of ideas, on 15th October 2005 the 3 practicing Dramatherapists in Malta met for the first time. This was followed by a meeting with the other Arts Therapists on the island on 12th November. The concept of C.A.T.S (The Creative Arts Therapies Society) was born and the core members were Fiona Hornstein (An English Sesame Trained Dramatherapist), Daniel Mercieca(A Hertfordshire trained Dramatherapist working with children full time in a residential and educational program), Tyrone Grima (A Roehampton trained Dramatherapist) and Rosetta DeBattista (a Music Therapist who has a very established clientele). Joe Bussetil, an established and highly respected Occupational Therapist also attended to offer advice and support. He was a tremendous help to us. As the Art Therapies are not regulated in Malta we decided to approach the Malta HPC (Health professions Council). They explained that the only way to get recognition is to be well established and have a name within the medical field. We thus decided that one of our missions as C.A.T.S would be to regulate the profession here as much as we could by becoming publicly recognised, only offering full membership to qualified therapists and offering a referral service. We sat down together and developed a mission statement which included providing: information on the Arts Therapies, offering support to Arts Therapists, increasing awareness and offering guidance to people that would be interested in training. Since our launch we have represented C.A.T.S at a meeting of head doctors and psychiatrists at a leading mental hospital, led a forum at a nationwide conference on Arts in Health, published our newsletter, “Felix”, held introductory workshops in different areas of drama and music therapy and spoken to various establishments about C.A.T.S. We are in the process of making affiliations with different organisations here and hope to move from strength to strength! Our first AGM was held in May 2008. It was well supported and our statute was agreed. We are now developing a strong name for ourselves in Malta and we hope that this will soon become international.Therapists.htmlTherapists.htmlTherapists.htmlTherapists.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3
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