Anyone done an accredited online counselling courses?

[Iwillbouceback]

I’ve read posts on here about people doing online counselling courses and wondered if any of them are accredited and would allow me to become a counselor?

Not without practice hours, no.

Takes years to be a fully qualified counsellor I'm afraid

You need to properly research what it takes to become a BACP accredited therapist.

Anyone can set up as a counsellor in the UK even with no training at all but to be a good, ethical practitioner you really need to do a rigorous training course in person with lots of practice hours, supervision and personal therapy.

I have known a few people to go down this route, but they have all stalled due to needing practice hours, and just not being able to get them.

Nope they're bollocks, sorry. As @nordica says above you need to do a BACP Level 4 diploma minimum with 100 hours of practice, supervision and private therapy which takes two years. You could do an online counselling course and set yourself up as there's no legal requirement for proper training, but you would not be skilled enough to sit with and hold people in real distress and could potentially cause psychological harm to clients. (Disclaimer - trained for 6 years until I had a psychotherapy degree so fully aware of the pitfalls).

Would you want to see a counsellor who had only done an online course, with no practice hours during training, not having been supervised or been through their own therapy?

You'll never get accredited that way. There are no shortcuts and no cheap routes.

Oxbridge distance learning are doing counselling courses. I was interested in the CBT diploma 3 course but was told to complete the level 3 counselling course along side would be beneficial.

After completing these, you will need to register with BACP as a student and complete 100hrs of practical. Something along those lines, that is what I remember.

I don’t know if there are any fully online courses that are a accredited. I’d be very surprised as a good course will include lots of in-person practice and as others have said, many many hours of unpaid supervised counselling. Plus your own personal counselling.

To get properly accredited with bodies recognised by the NHS and the websites that will put your profile up that most people use you need face to face contact.

These courses are very expensive.

I researched it all for ages and very nearly went for the proper face to face course. Had the interview and everything.

I pulled out and I am so glad I did. It would have been such a huge waste of money. For the few jobs as counsellors there are so many going for them. Just look on the counselling directory website. Even if you are self employed your page probably won't even get seen there are so many profiles.

To top it off it isn't actually anywhere near as enjoyable as I thought it would be. I ended up volunteering as a counsellor for a well known charity and doing their internal training to just work for them. The work isn't varied at all. I hate to say it but it just gets really boring. It is actually really fast faced. I thought of it feeling quite slow paced but my goodness you constantly have to be thinking of the next best thing to say. It is draining trying to get people to a calmer place and then say things to influence them around to another way of thinking. After I have done about 45mins to an hour of it I am more than ready to be done. I don't know how anyone else sees one client after another.

Don't get me wrong. It is nice to know I am making a difference, I get lots of feedback saying how well I am doing and it has been good experience for my cv. I am glad I didn't pay all of that money for it though. I would hate to do it for more than a couple of hours a week. I never thought I would say that before having experience. Perhaps you should do the same?