There are many introductory level counselling courses available.
How do you choose between them? It can be baffling!
Here are some factors to consider before you make your decision and how the Foundation Certificate we offer can be viewed, taking these into account:
Level of Course
Some introductory courses are very brief; some are even just a few days. You need to decide whether you just want a passing familiarity with counselling or something which really adds to your skills and knowledge base.
Our 20 day (120 hour) course takes place from January to November annually, which we feel gives enough time to build up a good base of counselling skills and a familiarity with several different theoretical approaches. It also means you have time to get to know your fellow students very well and feel a sense of camaraderie and support in your new endeavour.
Theory versus Skills
You may have noticed whilst researching courses that you can do some courses at this level based purely on skills training or purely on theory. If you have already done one of these courses, you might feel inspired to take a further course on the other aspect of counselling.
Our course is designed for people who are interested in both skills and theories. We will provide, every weekend,practical sessions which will help participants to develop counselling skills by learning methodically and practicing what they have learnt in a gradual, supportive way.
At the same time, each weekend, participants will be taught about a whole range of counselling and psychotherapy approaches by a multi-disciplinary faculty who are all, themselves, practicing counsellors and psychotherapists. There will be the opportunity to consider how each theoretical approach is applied ‘in action’. In this way, we feel we will be giving our students a real chance to integrate the new understanding of theories with their skills development.
Integrative As Opposed To Single Approach
You may know already that you want to be, perhaps, a psychodynamic or a person-centred therapist, in which case, you might want to do a course directly pursuing that approach.
If, however, you want to become an integrative therapist, or are not yet sure which of the approaches might suit you best and want to find out more about them, whilst keeping your options open, you would probably benefit more from taking an integrative course, such as ours.
In case you are not yet familiar with the terminology, integrative, in this sense, means taking ideas from different theoretical and practical approaches and weaving them into your own way of working with clients. In order to do this, you need to know about the different approaches. We have carefully chosen a faculty of tutors who are keen to discuss, teach and share with you their approaches and how they relate the theories to their work with clients.
We provide introductions to the following: Gestalt Therapy; Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT); Person-Centred counselling; Psychodynamic Counselling; Transactional Analysis; Transpersonal Therapy; Existential Therapy and unusually for a course of this nature Relationship and Psychosexual Therapy. We assume no prior knowledge of any theory.