Primary Certificate in Counselling Skills

This is an intensive two-day course in counselling skills based on the developmental skills model of Gerard Egan, with its three-stage framework of exploration, understanding and action, which can be used effectively in different work contexts.

WHO IS THE COURSE FOR?
The course is particularly appropriate for counsellors, psychologists, coaches, nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, welfare officers and other members of the caring and personnel professions. The course is not an opportunity to work out personal issues which may need the support of personal counselling or coaching, but a degree of self-disclosure in relation to course learning will be expected.

CONTENT

A. What is counselling?

B. Core conditions of the client-counsellor relationship: empathy, respect and congruence.

C. Egan’s Three Stage Model:

Stage 1 Exploration: attending, active listening, communicating empathy, demonstrating acceptance, being authentic, paraphrasing, reflecting, summarising, using open-ended questions to encourage.

Stage 2 Developing New Understanding: building on Stage 1 skills, accurate empathy and the challenging skills, summarising, probing, appropriate self-disclosure, immediacy, confrontation and inconsistencies, goal setting, alternative frames of reference.

Stage 3 Action Skills: contracts, decision-making, evaluation, identifying personal resources.

D. Professional Issues: pitfalls in counselling, boundaries, ethics, referrals.

E. Experience of counselling practice in three interchangeable roles: counsellor, client, observer.

F. Learn about the role of the counsellor, to understand the experience of being a client and to develop the skills of giving feedback and evaluation.

COURSE METHOD
The course sessions are designed on a workshop model which includes: a formal theoretical tutor input with group discussion; small and large group exercises to illustrate the teaching in a personal and practical way; practical counselling in triads of counsellor, client and observer, ending with verbal feedback from counsellors and clients and written evaluation from observer which forms part of each participant’s course workbook.

OBJECTIVES
On completion of the course delegates will:

• understand the principles of the Problem Management Model of Counselling based on the work of Gerard Egan
  
• be able to demonstrate basic Counselling Skills
  
• understand the difference between Counselling and Counselling Skills