I don't see how it's possible!
My sister is planning on starting training to be a counsellor next year, she thinks it'll be a good career but I'm worried she's going to spend so much on qualifying and all these other costs there seem to be that she'll never make a worthwhile living.
It costs thousands to qualify. Then she'd have to pay to be a member of BACP. She'd need indemnity insurance. She's planning on using her home as her business place, so surely that'll affect her mortgage and her home insurance. She'd need to advertise herself and have a website.
And there's so much competition. We googled counsellors in her area and there's hundreds of them. Unless dsis has a unique selling point (some counsellors offer counselling in foreign languages for example), how is she ever even going to get noticed? And then there's the NHS and charities that offer free counselling (although I'm guessing that's not easy to access).
And also on the profiles of the counsellors we looked like all of them said that in addition to private counselling they worked in pastoral roles in schools or they worked for CAMHS or somewhere, so presumably none of them earn enough from private counselling to make a living.
So please either reassure me it's possible to make a living from counselling and dsis will be fine, or tell me how to talk her out of it. Or do what she did and tell me it's not my problem to worry about.