Professional Counselling Diploma

Three year course over 9 weekends and one 5 day intensive residential experience per year with the option of a fourth year to specialise in an area such as working with trauma, groupwork, working with children, couples work (TBC)

Weekend format one weekend a month over nine months plus a summer intensive residential experience. Weekends will run from Friday 6:30pm till Sunday 4:00pm (non residential) Summer intensive residential will run from a Thursday evening 6:30 pm through to Monday evening at 4:00pm.

In house placement towards the end of the second year students will be invited to start seeing clients (when both the student and the tutor/s feel that the student is ready) at The Albany Centre. The clients will be receiving low cost counselling in return for seeing a student. The fees will be used to contribute to the cost of the room the cost of The Albany Centre paying for in house supervision and other costs such as student expenses and advertising the service etc. This is intended to ensure a solid and supportive first experience of seeing clients and will also give the student an insight into running a counselling practice/ service open to the public. Only after a student has experienced working in house will they be encouraged to seek placement experience elsewhere within an Albany Centre approved placement agency.

Training ethos is one of working at depth with feelings and relationships with a very strong emphasis on personal growth and development believing that one doesn’t learn counselling/ psychotherapy techniques rather that the individual becomes a counsellor/ psychotherapist. You are the tool (for there is no other) that helps others deal with their emotional worlds and development. The theoretical orientation is broadly humanistic integrating person centred values with Gestalt and principles of therapeutic communities underpinning the training culture. Students will learn by experiencing and reflecting on their own emotional world and development and then by learning the skills of facilitating others to express and understand themselves. All skills practice will be in the presence of the trainer and the training group.

Guest speakers will be invited to take part throughout the course and will be hired for their particular expertise in certain areas such as a trainer with a specialism in working with trauma, a legal expert, someone with experience of disabilities. Not all guest speakers will be therapists necessarily (though most will) but all will have unique knowledge and experience in their field and hence insight into the human condition.