Is Your Counsellor Qualified?!

How do you know?

So, IS your Counsellor qualified? …. How do you know?! The pandemic…. financial struggles… social isolation has meant that so many more of us need the support that talking to a counsellor can give. But where do you find suitable counselling support? Do you type ‘counselling in Kent’ into google, then start calling those who advertise?  Would you ask a friend for a recommendation? Would you see who is advertising locally? 

All of these could lead you to unscrupulous therapists … and even into potential harm. What most people don’t realise is that counselling and psychotherapy are UNREGULATED professions.  Anyone could decide today, that they would like to be a counsellor, call themselves one, create some business cards and a website and start seeing clients …  without training, without qualifications and without insurance …and this is perfectly legal! 

And it doesn’t end there! Not all formal qualifications are equal either! Awarding bodies have different standards and what follows is merely a snapshot of this inequality. Let’s take the 3 biggest counselling awarding bodies and courses offered under these. 

Training provider with awarding body A qualifies you to level 4 (this is seen as the level that qualifies you as a counsellor) in 4 years. The total number of taught hours is 575. 

Training provider with awarding body B qualifies you to level 4 in 4 years. The total number of taught hours is 600. 

Training provider with awarding body C qualifies you to level 5 in 3 years. The total number of taught hours is 282. 

This doesn’t even take into account the plethora of completely online, self-paced training courses, where the student never gets to practise a single skills session in preparation for working with real clients! These courses are, thankfully, not accepted by professional membership bodies. Counselling really is a minefield!  So, at the time when you need it, you could be led down a rabbit hole merely trying to find somebody adequately trained and experienced to help you. 

This problem is endemic.  Current directories, once a counsellor registers, and their initial qualification is checked, enable them to advertise as being able to work with any client group they wish. So, on the day of qualifying from an adult counselling course, counsellors can advertise that they work with children, young people, couples, families etc.  However, these groups each need a vastly different skill base to that of the talking therapy which they have learned in order to work with one adult in the room!

So is your counsellor qualified?! What’s in place to protect you?

There are professional membership bodies, which attempt to monitor standards and provide recourse to an external complaints process should you be unsatisfied with the therapy you are receiving.  However, membership of these bodies is OPTIONAL because there is no regulation of the profession. The main professional bodies are BACP, UKCP and the newest addition, NCPS.  The professional bodies hold a register of all counsellors and psychotherapists who they have granted membership to. A word of caution –  these registers are different from the professional bodies’ directories of counsellors and psychotherapists. Counsellors have to pay a fee to advertise on these directories on professional body’s website. 

REMEMBER it’s always okay to ask your counsellor or psychotherapist to see their qualification certificates, as well as their professional body membership and professional indemnity insurance. Perhaps, at present, this is the surest way to know whether or not your therapist is qualified!

Emma Farrell said: “Interestingly, in a decade of practice I have never been asked to provide any of these as certainty for any of my clients!“.

Is your counsellor qualified?!