COUNSELLING DIPLOMA

(EQUIVALENT TO LEVEL 4)

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

Work within an ethical and legal framework
• Work within an ethical framework for counselling.
• Demonstrate professional standards of conduct.
• Be able to maintain confidentiality in counselling work.
• Comply with relevant legal requirements for counselling.
• Explain the issues relating to the duty of care with regard to the legislation on safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults.

Work within a counselling service organisation.
• Work within the ethical, legal and procedural framework in which a given agency operates.
• Use teamwork skills to work with others.
• Use professional skills to work with others.

Use supervision to work within own limits of proficiency
• Monitor limits of proficiency and fitness to practise.
• Make suicidal risk assessments and work with emergency situations.
• Support referral where appropriate.
• Monitor own effectiveness and identify issues that require personal work.

Establish and sustain the boundaries of the counselling relationship
• Explore the role of the counsellor in different settings and services.
• Establish the boundaries of the counselling relationship within specific agency settings.
• Sustain the boundaries of the counsellor role.
• Manage breaks and endings appropriately

Establish and develop the therapeutic relationship
• Explain the nature and significance of the therapeutic relationship.
• Establish and develop the therapeutic relationship.
• Reflect on the nature and quality of the therapeutic relationship throughout the counselling work.
• Use the therapeutic relationship to inform and enhance the therapeutic process.
• Recognise and respond to difficulties and conflicts in the therapeutic relationship.

Understand and work with diversity
• Explore diversity issues between self and client during the counselling relationship.
• Evaluate how an understanding of diversity can enhance empathy .
• Demonstrate sensitivity to diversity issues with individual clients.

Challenge own issues, fears and prejudices
• Explore and challenge own beliefs and values.
• Explore and challenge own issues, fears and prejudices concerning working with client diversity.

Understand how diversity issues affect client access to counselling
• Reflect on diversity issues which impact on clients accessing counselling within agency settings.
• Reflect on issues relating to working with a third party present.

Work within a user-centred agreement for the counselling work
• Enable clients to explore their attitudes to and expectations of counselling within specific agency settings.
• Negotiate a shared agreement for the counselling work.
• Regularly review the working agreement with clients.

Maintain a user-centred focus throughout the counselling work
• Enable the client to identify, prioritise and focus on their agenda.
• Use regular reviews and clinical supervision to maintain the focus on the client’s agenda throughout the counselling work.
• Enable clients to explore their unspoken agendas.

Use counselling theory to understand own self
• Explore the nature and structure of own self.
• Explore own recent and formative personal history.
• Explore own patterns of relating.

Work on personal issues that resonate with client work
• Work on own emotional difficulties and internal conflicts that could impact on client work.
• Work on own recent and past life events that could impact on client work.
• Work on own relationship difficulties that could impact on client work.

Use self awareness to enhance counselling work
• Reflect on the importance of self awareness in counselling work.
• Use awareness of self during counselling sessions to enhance the therapeutic process.
• Use clinical supervision to develop awareness of own implicit processes.

Use a coherent framework of theory and skills to inform and enhance counselling work
• Use theory of the self, personal history and relationships in client work.
• Use theory of therapeutic change to inform client work.
• Use research findings to enhance understanding of client work.
• Use counselling skills and techniques associated with own theoretical approach.

Understand and work with client problems at different service levels
• Understand and work with common life problems and obstacles to well-being.
• Understand and work with common mental health problems.
• Use clinical supervision to identify clients with severe mental health problems and support the referral process.
• Reflect on different approaches to understanding mental health.

Manage own development as a counsellor
• Evaluate own progress, identify needs and plan learning.
• Assist other counselling trainees to identify their progress and learning needs.

Reflect on and evaluate own counselling work within agency settings
• Reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness of own counselling work in agency settings.
• Prepare for and use clinical supervision effectively.
• Investigate the use of evaluative tools in counselling work.

Integrative Course

YEAR 1 (equivalent Level 3)

Foundation = 120 hours (40 x 3 hours)

Part 1 – History and Development of Three Schools of Psychotherapy

  • Psychodynamic (developmental)
  • Humanistic (inc Transpersonal)
  • Behavioural (inc Cognitive and Neurological)

Psychodynamic

  • Freud – Psychoanalysis
  • Melanie Klein – Kleinian
  • Winnicott
  • Adler – Tree of Life
  • Erick Erickson – 8 stages of Development
  • Bowlby – Attachment & Loss
  • John Bradshaw – Inner Child

Transpersonal

  • William James
  • Jung
  • Wilber
  • Grof

Humanistic

  • Rogers – Person Centred
  • Fitz Perls – Gestalt
  • Yalom – Existential
  • Gendlin – Focusing

Cognitive Behavioural & Neurological

  • Transactional Analysis – Berne
  • Behaviourism – Skinner
  • CBT – Padesky 5 Areas Approach
  • NLP & Hypnosis – Bandler
  • Solution Focused – Wittgenstein and de Shazer

Part 2 Beginning Practice

  • Supervision
  • Revisiting Safeguarding
  • Revisiting Ethics and Legal Requirements
  • Record Keeping

Part 3 Applying Theory to Practice through study of key presenting issues

  • Relationship & Loss
  • Self harm & Suicide
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Stress and Problem Solving

YEAR 2 (equivalent Level 4)

Year 2 – Counselling Diploma – 120 hours (40 x 3 hours)

Part 1 Clinical Practice

  • Psychopathology
  • DSM V
  • Trauma
  • Sexual Abuse

Part 2 Specialist Areas

  • OCD
  • Eating Disorders
  • Relationships & Couples Therapy
  • Working with Adolescents