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What can I do to improve my chances of being accepted onto the course?

Course places are offered to eligible applicants in date order of application. You need to satisfy the set of criteria listed on our website, and in the course specification for CSK-L2 listed on the CPCAB website, but it's not our practice to 'cherry-pick' candidates or compare applicants with each other. Where the course is coming near to its start-date, our centres may prioritise people who respond promptly to our request for an interview over those who appear not to be responding, because of the time-constraints of the interview process. Counselling training courses stretch their candidates on occasion, and you may feel yourself out of your comfort zone . Your interviewer may explore whether you are in a life-situation where you can cope with this. For instance, they might check how strong your support network is outside of the classroom setting, how heavily competing life-responsibilities press on you, and for life-events which are counter indicators to setting out on the training (eg. a recent bereavement). If necessary our centres may advise that you reapply later or (normally for those progressing on their current training path) we may make an offer conditional on your engagement in ypersonal therapy.

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What qualifications does will my tutor team have?

Our counselling tutors are all highly experienced counselling practitioners and are CPCAB-approved. All team members in our training centres have over a decade's background as practitioners in counselling. The teaching staff at the centre have years of experience in leading other teaching teams and have taught training groups in multiple training contexts at Levels 1-6. Our team members have previously programme-led or taught counselling-courses for Guildford College, Banbury Counselling Academy, Newbury College and University of Greenwich.

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What's the difference between BACP and CPCAB?

The Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body (CPCAB) is the awarding body for your qualifications. Our centres work with CPCAB to ensure that our counselling courses and the counsellors who teach on them are independently & rigorously assessed, and that our centres meet with CPCAB's standards. CPCAB is the only awarding body in the United Kingdom run by counsellors for counsellors, which makes it ideally placed to assess the standards to which its centres must operate..

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), is a major professional membership body for UK-based counsellors and psychotherapists. It has a role in setting standards and in protecting the public and represents the interests of the counselling profession.

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Can I do my entire training online?

Not entirely. If you follow the training route set out by CPCAB, you can train online for level 2 and level 3, after which point (at Level 4) CPCAB require that there should be an element of face-to-face training. Our centres offer starter-level trainings at Level 2 as an option which is fully online as well as an online Level 3 follow-on course. For CPCAB's Level 4 counselling training, the majority of the training course would be on-site, so at that point you would need to enrol with a local provider. If your preferred training route is other than a CPCAB one post-Level 3, or are looking for a more specialised training (eg. for pastoral care, working with children, or where the provider has other special requirements) you should check with your chosen provider to make sure you will meet their requirement at that point in your training.

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There are lots of options for training. How do I find the right one?

To work out where to start, first think about where you want to end up. If you want to be recognised by a specific professional organisation, If you want to be recognised by a specific professional organisation, or be acceptable to a particular employer, check with the employer, professional organisation or training school in question, and find out what they need from you. If you are selecting a starter-course, make sure to check that it will be a stepping stone to your next qualification. Not all Level 2 trainings are equivalent, and may not necessarily be what you need to be accepted on a CPCAB Level 3 training. To know if a prior training is acceptable for entry to a further course, ask the centre providing the further training, not the centre offering the previous training, as they may not have up-to-date information.

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Are there any extra costs involved in the training?

You need to have a reliable internet connection as well as a computer to engage with the training, as well as a private, reliably-available space for classwork.

For online sessions our centres use Zoom, which you can download and use for free. Your assignments are submitted via online web-forms, or Powerpoint-compatible files for presentation materials, which you can create and edit in Microsoft Office, or if you prefer, a compatible free alternative such as LibreOffice which can be downloaded and used for free from the internet.