17. WEBINAR - Overcoming Client Resistance: Understanding Adherence and Techniques for Positive Engagement - 15th May 2025

Presentation Aims:

• Define the challenge of client adherence and resistance for case managers and the opportunity / benefits of effectively enhancing openness and engagement in therapy
• Explain the impact of poor engagement or non-adherence and the benefits of addressing it
• Introduce examples of non-adherence and identify corresponding causes
• Present simple tools and techniques to help case managers determine causes and appropriately support their client to best engage with different types of intervention
• Illustrate techniques with real-world scenarios
• Encourage collaboration between case manager and treatment provider perspectives
• Discuss key issues and considerations when looking to improve adherence and engagement, determine biggest challenges for case managers when improving adherence
• Identify next steps such as development of useful resources for this topic and refinement for future topics

What Will Attendees Learn?

1. Understand common reasons for clients’ resistance to adhere to treatments.

2. Learn evidence-based techniques to address resistance.

3. Develop strategies to foster positive engagement in therapy.

4. To apply skills through practical case scenarios.

5. The role of technology in enhancing engagement.

6. Develop awareness and skills for sensitive conversations.

Who Is the Webinar For?

Case managers, care coordinators, clinicians, and support service professionals working closely with individuals who have experienced physical or psychological trauma. Members of rehabilitation multidisciplinary teams (MDTs)—including occupational therapists, nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, and speech and language therapists. Also suitable for those in leadership roles within organisations supporting rehabilitation and broader healthcare services.

Meet the Presenters

Dr Dominique Fray-Aitken is a UK-based, HCPC-registered and BPS-chartered counselling psychologist with over eight years’ experience providing counselling and psychological therapy across the NHS, charity sector, and private practice.

She established her private practice on Harley Street in 2017. After nearly five years - and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic - she transitioned her work predominantly online to better meet the evolving needs of her clients.

Dr Fray-Aitken has worked with children, young people, adults, and older adults from diverse backgrounds across the globe, supporting individuals facing a wide range of life challenges. Her therapeutic approach is relational, focusing on exploring relationship patterns and difficulties to help clients make sense of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

She has a particular interest in working with clients navigating trauma, identity, relationships, and neurodiversity. Most recently, she contributed a chapter on Race and Politics to the published book Reimagining Race in Psychology: Challenging Narratives and Widening Perspectives in Training and Practice.

Dr Devdeep Ahuja began his career as a physiotherapist but quickly  moved into innovation, growth and entrepreneurship. Shortly after university, he founded an open access journal in Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, sparking his interest in research. This led to a PhD and a foray into case management, during which he established a pioneering online portal for physiotherapists, creating global opportunities for collaboration and education.

Post-PhD, Dev became a rehabilitation manager for a multinational corporation, developing services, managing a team, and building a national provider network. In 2018, he left the corporate world to found RTW Plus, which has grown significantly. RTW Plus offers rehabilitation and pain management services, as well as medical reporting for insurance companies, solicitors, and the public sector in the UK. The company features a strong team of case managers specializing in personal injury and clinical negligence, supported by a network of specialist neurophysiotherapists, neuropsychologists, and neuro-occupational therapists.

Dev's clinical expertise includes chronic pain, amputations, multi-trauma rehabilitation, and vaccine-related side effects.