Start your career in counselling & psychotherapy

All the courses listed in this section have been awarded either Accredited, Advanced Specialist or Quality Checked recognition by the NCPS. The Society cannot recommend a specific training provider or course and we advise you to take time to research all courses to help you make a decision.

We would advise you to contact the training provider you are interested in – they can advise on any grants or funding that may be available.

There are many different approaches to counselling and as many routes to becoming a counsellor. This is reflected in the large variety of courses that are available. If you know what you want to do in the future, find out what qualifications you will ultimately need and then work back from there. For example what type of clients do you want to work with? Do you want to work full time or part time? Do you want to work in private practice or another forum?

Counselling is not regulated in the UK and there are currently no plans for statutory regulation so there are no ‘regulated’ courses as such. Professional bodies like the NCPS recognise some courses as being safe, ethical and delivered competently, and as providing their graduates with enough training to join their Accredited Register of practitioners. Our register is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, providing an additional assurance of quality.

NCPS guidance on caseload for trainees on placement

The NCPS Register requires that students have, during their training, completed a minimum of 100 supervised clinical hours with clients within a relevant organisation/agency. It is important that training and placement providers provide guidance about the number of clients trainees should be seeing. There can be a tendency for trainees to try to gain their hours as quickly as possible, and this may be a risk to their own well-being as well as that of their clients. The fundamental principles of Beneficence and Self-Responsibility in the NCPS Code of Ethical Practice are relevant here. The caseload which a trainee is allocated will vary depending on the particular service, client group, course requirements, and level of training and experience of the trainee. 

As guidance, we recommend that at first students see a maximum of four clients per week, and up to six clients per week once they have at least 75 hours of clinical experience. At all times, the well-being of individual students and their clients must be considered.

Supervision for Students

Students/Counsellors-in-training must abide by the requirements of their training, placement provider(s), and their contract with their supervisor. We recommend a minimum of 1.5 hours per month, face to face (in the room), with a qualified supervisor who is suitably experienced to support the casework that they are carrying out, and with meetings happening fortnightly. A break from supervision may be taken if no clients are seen in a calendar month, subject to the agreement of the training provider, placement provider and supervisor. This should be documented for accreditation purposes. The Society nevertheless recommends that supervision continues regardless of whether or not members are seeing clients, particularly for students and those less experienced. It is likely to be valuable to discuss areas not related directly to client work for their development.

A mix of 1-2-1 and group supervision, facilitated by an experienced supervisor, is acceptable. However, students do need to experience individual 1-2-1 supervision during their training.

We recommend:

1. 1 hour of supervision for every 8 hours of client work
2. not less than an overall minimum of 1.5 hours per month
3. delivered not less than fortnightly

In order to calculate individual participant supervision time if attending group supervision please note the following:

1. For groups of up to four, each participant can claim 50% of the time together. 
2. For groups of five or more the time needs to be divided equally

Peer supervision is not acceptable for students