Therapeutic Person-Centred Counselling (Level 4)

COURSE OVERVIEW

The Level 5 Diploma in Therapeutic Person-Centred Counselling course is divided into sixteen comprehensive units:

Unit 1: Using information, communication and technology ICT in Therapeutic Person-Centred Counselling

Information, communication and technology (ICT) comprises core skills for learning. In this distance learning course utilisation of methods, tools and strategies of ICT is important in order to establish and maintain a sound working relationship with tutors and the college. In this first unit students are presented with tools and strategies with which to begin to undertake independent research and integrate this into coursework activities, for example suggesting ways to read research articles and assimilate types of information from these.

Unit 2: Introduction to counselling part 1
In this next unit on the Counselling course we will be looking at the general approaches and applications in counselling.

The counsellor is neither a friend or parent substitute, therefore is not in a position to act as advisor or teacher. Counsellors should also avoid being seen as a healer or mentor. These guidelines are quite difficult to adhere to as it is easy to get drawn into an overly personal conversation or relationship, especially if the client visits regularly. However, this is not the role of the counsellor and will inevitably jeopardise the client-counsellor professional relationship.

Counselling developed from theories and practices of psychology and psychiatry. This unit looks at some of the more well known people and theories, and show how these developed into the counselling approaches used today.

Unit 3: Introduction to counselling part 2

The psychodynamic approach (or model) refers to the action, changes or what is going on in the mind, which influences everything we do in life.

The basis of the theory as previously discussed, is that an individual’s personality and consequent behaviour are based on, and influenced by the Id, Ego and Superego (first identified and theorized by feud).

Unit 4: Child counselling
Dealing with children and adolescents in the therapeutic environment requires special counselling skills and strategies. Children are often not prepared to communicate freely and this could be due to a number of factors such as shyness, fear of the unknown, loyalty, lack of confidence, lack of expressive vocabulary etc.

In child counselling, transference has occurred when the child behaves towards the counsellor as though they were their mother or father. This happens because the child is convinced that the counsellor has similar attributes to their parent/parents and therefore projects beliefs onto them. This transference can be either positive or negative depending on how the child views the counsellor and what characteristics appear similar.

Unit 5: Relationship counselling
Clients may seek relationship counselling with varied knowledge and perceptions of what it exactly entails including format and expectations. There may also be disparity in the willingness of clients to participate.

Resolution strategies for couples that display splitting and projection tendencies are mainly focused around encouragement of the breakdown of ego-syntonic situations, in other words help the clients to view the extreme life patterns as a creation of the relationship problems; they need to recognize that it is acceptable to have mixed, different and even opposing feelings about things than their respective partners. This unit explores the related theories and models and explains strategy development in different relationship scenarios.

Unit 6: Family counselling

Family systems are unique socially structured units which have numerous avenues of membership and combinations of components. Within families there are definitive roles to be fulfilled by each member

When individuals ‘differentiate’ from the family origins, problems associated with this new and independent life can cause problems such as various psychological disorders, addictive behaviour, poor career prospects and even crime.

Unit 7: Bereavement counselling part 1

Bereavement brings unexpected inner feelings, and even if death of a loved one was expected or planned as in assisted suicide, these emotions will still be unpredictable. It is impossible to predict or anticipate individual response to loss, or the time it will take to go through the grieving process. In some cases it may never be complete.

During this unit, the grieving process will be examined in some detail, and in addition to this, specific circumstances of loss will be covered. However, for the counsellor, skills, experience and theoretical knowledge can only be a small preparation for the enormity of sadness and emotional tragedy that may be expressed by bereaved clients during therapy sessions. Transference of the sense of loss and depth of emotion may occasionally occur, and even cause anxiety about personal mortality. This is something to be aware of when undertaking bereavement counselling.

Unit 8: Bereavement counselling part 2

• Suicide
• Bereavement through war, terrorism or violence