Introduction to counselling

Amersham & Wycombe College – a leading provider of vocational courses and training in Buckinghamshire

Students of all ages and backgrounds study with us each year; whether you are a young person soon to leave school or an adult looking to retrain or enhance your job prospects by gaining new skills, then we have something for you.

On completing this course you will be able to:

• Show increased self-awareness and self-confidence, evidence personal growth and demonstrate insight into your own strengths and areas for development;

• Use the basic counselling skills in your communication with others such as rapport building, active listening and attending, empathic understanding, reflecting, paraphrasing, summarising and focusing;

• Understand the further options available to you for further training and study or employment.

• Demonstrate that you have, through your attendance, improved your self-confidence and also learned to communicate more effectively.

• Show understanding of the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy and be able to apply its values and principles to ethical dilemmas that could arise in various settings.

You will learn the following:

• Forming a group learning contract.
• Course aims and objectives.
• Health and safety.
• Equal opportunities and diversity.
• What is and isn’t counselling.
• Definitions.
• BACP Ethical Framework.
• Confidentiality and boundaries.
• The counselling relationship.
• Qualities of a good listener.
• The core conditions.
• Communication: How to say something to someone in a way that they can hear it and learn from it/accept it/work with it.
• Explore and communicate empathy. Explore congruence and UPR linked to listening skills.
• Listening skills including: Paraphrasing, summarising, reflecting, clarifying and focusing.
• Introduction to challenging linked to the core conditions.
• Blocks to good listening.
• Non-verbal communication.
• Listening skills exercises.
• The value or not of questions. Using open questions.
• Introduction to Person-Centred Approach and the work of Carl Rogers.
• Introduction to 6 conditions.
• Introduction to Conditions of worth.
• Introduction to Psychodynamic theory including Freud.
• Introduction to CBT.
• Questions and reflections on the future.
• Importance of self-care.