This qualification is a new Single Subject and will be awarded as a Single Subject Certificate from June 2023.
Main Topics of Study:
Concepts in Counselling
- How to be an effective and professional counsellor
- How to work in line with certified counselling guidelines
- How the counsellor behaves during practice
- The definitions of counselling and the different types of helping relationships
- The purpose and goals of counselling
- Maintaining accurate and confidential client records
- How and when to refer clients to alternative professional helping relationships
- How to deal with work overload to avoid burnouts - How to maintain continuous professional development
- Ethical practice
- Counsellor supervision - Types of communication with others
- Appropriate respondent practice
- Overcoming barriers to communication
- Identifying different types of communication effective for different personalities
Counselling Practices
- Relationship enhancement
- Listening
- Observation
- Responding
- Paraphrasing
- Summarisation
- Probing
- Focusing
- Reflection of self
The Counselling Process/Stages (Gerald Egan Model)
- Introduction to the counselling session
- Contracting with the client
- Inviting the client to talk
- Exploration stage
- Understanding stage
- Action stage
Personality Psychology
- Definitions and components of personality
- Personality type(s)
- Personality disorder(s)
- Counselling factors that influence personality change/development
- Roles of personality development in counselling
Theories of Counselling
- Personality/human development theories
- Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud)
- Psychosexual stages of personality development (Sigmund Freud) - Rational Cognitive Emotive Behavioural Theory (Albert Ellis)
- Person Centred Theory (Carl Rogers)
- Gestalt (Fredrick Perls)
- Solution focused theory
- Behavioural Theory (B.F Skinner & Pavlov)
- Eclectic/Integrative Model (Gerald Egan & Susan Gilmore)
Practitioner Ethics
- The concepts of ethics
- How to avoid inappropriate relationships with clients
- How to understand clients values
- How to make ethical decisions
- How to ethically interview a client about their personal background
Levels of Counselling Awareness
- How to develop counsellor competence
- Unconscious incompetence
- Conscious incompetence
- Conscious competence
- Unconscious competence
Understanding Other Branches of Applied Psychology
- Environmental psychology
- Health psychology
- Sports psychology
- Forensic psychology
- Industrial psychology
- Clinical psychology
- Educational psychology
Example Candidate Response Booklet
Example Candidate Response (ECR) Booklets are a source of crucial information for Centres and Candidates as they use real candidate responses. We ask Senior Examiners to comment on five or more responses in terms of why the mark was awarded with commentary about how to improve the answer (if necessary).
