Any counsellors about - how on earth does a counsellor qualify?

[Quickquestion10]

I have googled and am none the wiser. The foundation degree/certificate and 'psychology with counseling' degrees have muddled me.

I have an arts degree but no A Level or similar in counselling or psychology.

I would like to take a full time accredited course to become a counsellor. I'd like to go straight into full time study if possible and take a course that will lead to qualifying as an accredited counsellor, without further study afterwards ideally. (Not because I don't want to train further but the funds won't last forever).

Happy to be a distance student or OU. Happy to take a preparatory qualification before but would like it to be full time.

Can anyone with experience help me through this minefield? Maybe I've been googling too long.

£15K minimum isn't a typical cost total, though. Just looked at Bury College courses and the fees are an amazingly cheap £2K for the Level 3 Certificate and the Level 5 Diploma.

My Level 3 and Masters fees were £9K in total. I paid £2K on top of this for mandatory therapy and supervision.

You can get access loans with most diploma courses and a student postgrad lian for a master's if you don't already have a master's degree, depending on your eligibility.

@benfoldsfivefan I am in London so should have said that, as obviously everything here is just ridiculously expensive. Regents is very popular, but much more expensive than the cost I outlined, but yes there are cheaper options too.

I had free counselling at a children’s centre from a trainee, and she was more helpful than non-trainee ones I had seen previously.

Please do make sure that you are suited to counselling as a career.

It's very demanding (I have friends who are counsellors.)

If you want to be self employed you need to find and pay for premises (or have a suitable home office.)

If your circumstances allow you to earn a low-ish income, that's fine. The only people I know who work as counsellors are in relationships and they are the lower earner.

Look at fees for counselling in your area. (anywhere from £45 to around £60 but more in London.)

You can't work an 8 hour day as a counsellor. My friends do something like 3 -4 hours a day but they also spend time in a week on their own supervision.

There is also a huge 'glut' of counsellors, all competing for clients and you might find it hard to build a client list.

This is of course 'worst case' but be realistic.

Roughly where in the UK are you based, OP? @Quickquestion10
If you're in Scotland, I can probably help explain, and point you to the right sources.

I'm in northern Ireland.

Hello so dis you ever find the info you were looking for as I am starting right from the bottom a councelling course level 1, just to see if I fit the role but clearly no one wants to spend any more years then they have too, so I'm looking for the best route forward. Any help?

@Ktyrich It takes at least three years to become a qualified counsellor. This is the route most people take:

https://www.bacp.co.uk/careers/careers-in-counselling/training/

Or this. Longer but you can usually practice and be paid as a trainee. There are also route to qualify to work in NHS

www.psychotherapy.org.uk/psychotherapy-training/

You might find this article useful : How to become a counsellor Written by a counselling school
🙂

Thanks for the detailed overview. Some people have stated that you need a L4 to pursue a Master's, other people say L3 is enough. Would you know which is correct?

Can I ask if the MA accepted you with the level 3 only? And did you have a lot of related work experience or a BA in a relevant field to get onto it if so?

As pp said, "counsellor" is not a protected title, so technically you don't need any qualification to call yourself one.

However, to register with the BACP or the NCPS you need a minimum of a level 4 diploma that includes 100 hours of seeing clients.
Most level 4 courses require 20 hours of your own personal therapy, I'm not sure if this is a BACP/NCPS requirement, but I know the charity I work for will automatically reject any applicants who have taken a course without the personal therapy element.
Employed jobs will want you to be registered with some sort of body. The BACP or UKCP are probably the most popular.

There are costs to consider aside from course fees including the time and cost of personal therapy, supervision and the voluntary placement hours you'll have to build up.

The amount of supervision and personal therapy that's required is very course dependent, often with higher level qualifications requiring more than lower. For example, a L4 Diploma might ask for 20 hrs whereas a BSc might ask for 50.

In NI the NHS counselling jobs tend to lean towards CBT and so require BABCP registration. Queens offer a masters but have quite specific entry requirements.
It would be good to get some clarity on what modality you're interested in studying, as this will really help you choose your course.

Employed counselling jobs are few and far between and tend to be poorly paid as they're often in charities.

Some counsellors go into private practice as a self employed counsellor. Generally it takes 2-3 years to build a sustainable client base and generate a decent income, so this is almost always done alongside another part time job for a while.
Private practice can be competitive depending on what part of the country you're in, what demand is like there and how many counsellors are already working in that area etc. There can also be big fluctuations in client numbers.

BetterHelp have largely dominated the online market, so all of those geographic influences do matter.
You need a whole other set of skills to be self employed, it can be lonely and you need to be good at marketing and reasonably business minded.

There's no guaranteed job at the end of the counselling qualification. Some do it full time, but a significant number of people see a few clients a week alongside another job or have done a sideways move into something that utilises the skills.

What is the end goal? Private practice? Working for the NHS? Full time work? Doing it for a few hours here and there during the week? Is there a lot of pressure on you to earn or can you afford to earn very little while you're building a career?

Answering these questions might help bring more clarity.

I'm based in NI, if you have any questions fire away!

The level 2 would get you onto the level 3 where I studied in fact that’s exactly what I did. Beware the pitfalls, the courses take ALOT of self examination and can be v triggering if you have personal history, it’s quite a lot of work for a level 2 course, when you get to level 3 you need to find somewhere for a placement style arrangement same for all levels after with increasing hourly commitments, you also need to have counselling yourself as a professional as part of your CPT. The pay is pants. You have to do so much work for free before you can even qualify. You can’t just set yourself up as a self employed counsellor as soon as you finish your qualifications the professional body won’t accept this for accreditation and without that you shouldn’t be seeing clients. You can just see why so many people don’t qualify and how there’s a shortage.

Yes, level 3 only. I had no related work experience and my undergraduate degree was in a completely different field.