Counselling MA – (M.A.)

Although the training is not a `recognised´ training of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), many students on the programme have chosen to complete the requirements stipulated by the BACP to become individually accredited clinical practitioners.
By successfully completing the programme, you are qualified by the University of London as a counsellor. You may then wish to go on to become accredited by the BACP. This is not a further qualification, but it is a recognised path to joining a membership list compiled by the BACP.
As part of the University of London, the programme falls under existing state regulation for institutions of higher education. This ensures that the quality of education and training on offer is monitored, that professional standards are adhered to, and that your interests, as well as those of your clients, are protected.

The orientation of the training is psychodynamic - a description taken to embrace the work of Freud, Jung, Klein, Winnicott, Kohut, Fairbairn, Stern, and others. Accordingly, theory is not taught for its own sake, only in the interests of responding, as sensitively as you can, to the difficulties of your clients.

There are two important requirements:

-Personal counselling or psychotherapy
You are expected to be in your own counselling/therapy from the beginning of the second term of your first year of the training, to its end. Programme staff will advise you about suitable clinicians. Please note that you will need to pay the costs for this yourself.

-Counselling Placement
The second requirement involves finding a placement in a counselling organisation to who you will offer your voluntary service so that you can accomplish 100 hours of supervised clinical practice. Again, programme staff will help you in finding a suitable placement. Placements differ in respect of what organisations expect their volunteers to do. However, it is most likely that you will have to set aside two or three hours a week, maybe more, and perhaps at different times during the week, for your clinical practice and supervision, from roughly the February or March of your first year of training.

Please note: You have the option of exiting the programme after two years with a Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling. Alternatively, students successfully completing the full three-year programme will be awarded the MA in Counselling.