Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling (BACP accredited)

Course Content

Introductory Weekend

Following a successful individual interview, at the beginning of the course, a weekend selection group interview process with the key tutors on the course takes place:

   1. To enable students to assess the staff’s teaching styles

   2. To enable students to assess the group and ask themselves if they want to be in this particular group

   3. To enable core teaching staff to assess students in terms of:

      Knowledge base

      Interactive patterns

      A course balance in terms of professional roles and perspectives

   4. To give the group an opportunity to meet and develop some

      preliminary bonding and assessment 

The weekend gives the student a final opportunity to assess if the course and group are right for them. The tutors also have the opportunity to assess if all students are ready to undertake the course.

Year One

• Bonding and Attachment
• Introduction to Ego-States
• Transference and Countertransference
• Introduction to Transactional Analysis
• Introduction to Gestalt
• Introduction to NLP
• The Seven Level Model

Year Two

• Existential and Humanistic Counselling
• Systems Theory
• Myths, Archetypes and the Transpersonal
• Primary Care
• Cultural Awareness

During the second and third terms students help to create the programme and it will include outside specialists. Topics covered could include: Setting up a practice, working in a GP practice, working with survivors of sexual abuse, working with eating disorders, working with alcohol and drug abuse, ageism, sexism and racism, cogntive behavoirial therapy, mindfulness. 

Course Aims

The course is designed to produce safe and experienced counsellors who are trained by safe and experienced practitioners, who are also good teachers. We do this by providing:

• thorough theoretical bases
• a safe and structured environment to explore, experiment, take risks and to develop personally
• a space for ideas, ethical dilemmas and current topics
• a learning community where skills are evaluated, encouraged, monitored and assessed  and where lots of practice is encouraged
• a resource for networking
• a place for coaching
• a place that encourages people to think for themselves
• a professional and ethical training

This will enable students to practise as counsellors in:

• The Health Care Service (Hospital/GP Practices)
• Social Services
• Schools
• Pastoral Care
• Private Practice

Self Development

There is an emphasis on self-development throughout the course. The ethos incorporates the three P’s: permission, protection and potency and the three C’s: care, creativity and compassion. Alongside this is a profound professionalism.

Why / Rationale

We believe in the great value of experiential learning, particularly in this field of counselling psychology, for the following reasons:

• Congruence: in order to enable potential counsellors to practise what they will then model to their clients. To help them develop empathic attunement without it being clouded by their own issues, eg being willing and able to meet their client’s map of the world.
• A belief in personal creativity and development for its own sake. Berne referred to this as physis, a term Berne borrowed from classical Greek philosophers.
• To encourage the development, expression and use of people’s very specific talents while honouring differences.
• For professional and ethical considerations, ie prevention of a trainee doing their own personal work vicariously through their clients, eg not using their clients as a primary source of strokes, or as a way to surface and address countertransference issues that could prejudice the client’s well-being.
• To facilitate course members in their growth and contactfulness.
• To help surface any hidden expectations we may have of clients.

How

We approach this through the group and in individual sessions:

• Each day is prefaced by group process time. This is used for checking in, surfacing individual issues, dealing with anything left over from the previous training session, to ask questions, give feedback and celebrate successes. The rationale behind this is that there is a clear time structure behind each day, a beginning, middle and an end. It also gives a place where bonding takes place, networking starts and co-operation continues. It also provides a safe structure for dealing with conflict.
• We provide opportunities for individuals to work, as the group becomes safer and more bonded. Through this, students receive peer supervision and the value of shared learning and feedback.
• Surfacing group stages as they occur and dealing with them:- Storming (Tuckman);  Pairing/Flight/Dependency (Bion);  Differing Stages of the Group Imago (Berne).
• Individual tutorials (students have two per term with their individual tutors, to discuss personal and professional development).
• Group tutorials (tutorial groups remain together for a year with one tutor and then change.
• Personal Journal (the assessment is to see that it is kept). The reasons for this have been outlined in an earlier section of this document.
• There is a requirement that students have a personal counsellor/psychotherapist. Tutors give help in this and a recommended list of practitioners is provided. This is negotiated with each individual person, as each person’s history and experience of counselling differs, and our aim is to respect that.  (General guidelines are, a minimum of 40 hours during the two year period).

Additional Information >

Key Information

Course title

Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling (BACP accredited)

Accreditation

The course is accredited by the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP)

It has been accredited for over 10 years.

Duration

2 Years part-time

Weekday (one day per week)

or weekend (one weekend per month) options available

Entry requirements

90 hour Certificate in Counselling or equivalent. Other creditable training may be considered , please see our APL / APEL procedures on the 'How to Apply' page

Intakes

September every year

Cost

From £5928.33 inc VAT

Instalment plans available, see Additional Information section

Additional costs:

Final examination - £100

Personal therapy (40 hours) - £15 - £40 per hour

Placement supervision (if not provided by placement) 

Dates

Please see 'Additional Information' page for 1st year dates

Taster Days

We offer one-day tasters in all of our longer training. These days are both informative and fun and you will leave with some useful tools. They take place 2-3 times a year, dates can be found in the Workshops section of the website. If you decide to progress onto further training the amount you have paid will be discounted from the course fees.

Counselling Taster day

The taster day is open to a wide range of people who may find this day beneficial. It is open for all those who are thinking of pursuing a career in counselling, and of course those who are interested in developing their communications and inter-personal skills. Read more...