Changing direction - retraining as a counsellor

[Caplin]

Hi,

I’ve been back through a few previous threads on this subject which have been very helpful. I am considering retraining, I have always felt that by 50 (I’m 45 now) I wanted to be in a position to work more flexibly, and financially I can now afford to retrain, rebuild etc and afford a pay drop.

right now I work FT 9-5, I enjoy what I do but the nature of my work is becoming suffocating and won’t change. Ultimately I love working with people and the happiest times of my career are when I feel like I can make a difference to someone.

for years I have been active in mentoring and coaching on the side of my role, I love it. I have also always been keen on understanding how mental health impacts performance at work. Now in middle age I have a lot more life experience of this area (not necessarily me, but friends, family and colleagues, plus extensive family experience of adult autism). My original degree (in Scotland) allowed me to do 2 years of a psychology degree which I thoroughly enjoyed, but in the end I specialised in another subject.

anyway, questions for those of you who have done it. I can do a post grad diploma part time over 3 years (1 day a week contact learning plus 150 hours clinical experience). Or would it be better to do it full time and concentrate on it fully rather than trying to squeeze it around a stressful job?

Long term I would like to do contract/private practice, probably workplace counselling and Employee Assistance support/referrals. Basically, I need to work, but don’t need a salary. There is also another part time job I would like to go for in a few years which would be a day or so a week and would be complementary to counselling in part.

roughly what do private practitioners earn hourly/on average? Is it flexible? How many years experience ideally before you can contract? Are there even job out there (looking on sites there seem to be a few).

Any help or advice appreciated!

Hello, just bumping this for you a bit. I don't have all the answers for you but have a little bit of experience that might help.... Everyone I know that has done the diploma route does say it's intense and hard work, enjoyable too in many ways so you might find it's OK doing it alongside full time work (many do) but personally particularly if you have personal life/family commitments at the weekend and want to continue having at least a bit of a life I might think about seeing if you can go part-time in your day job to give you a day a week to focus or similar? You will probably also find it easier to get a placement for your supervised practice if you can be available in the week as well particularly if you want one in your area of interest (not too sure how that all works though)?

The other thing I'd say is since your interest is particularly in the workplace, would you think about becoming a coach and facilitator rather than counsellor? You say you already do some of this and it requires many of the same skills but is much, much easier to get accredited in than counselling? There's a big demand too, in my area at least, and the people that are good earn much more than counsellors and can pick and choose their own work. You could get extra qualifications in all sorts as you go to increase the sorts of things you could take on, workplace mediation, career counsellor, team/group facilitation, action learning set facilitation, psychometric tester are just some that spring to mind but I'm sure there's more (maybe look on the ILM website for inspiration, the accreditation for most of these things is an ILM level 5 although the psychometrics usually have their own accreditation systems)

Thank you, this is really helpful. I had considered this but wasn’t sure how to ‘get there’. Off to look at ILM!

Hi @Caplin I realised this an old thread but wondering if you have gone down the counsellor route or coach route as @maxelly suggested? I am in a very similar situation as you, in my late 40s and seriously consider to retrain myself to be a counsellor but very concerned about job perspective.