Supporting You
This page is here to support you with helpful and interesting content as we all share the same aim; to develop compassionate, safe, and effective practitioners. We value our tutors who are shaping the future of counselling and hope you find this page useful. We will be updating the page throughout the academic year, so please remember to visit regularly.
How to Become a Counsellor :
CPCAB Free Counselling Training Taster
We're very excited to announce 'How to Become a Counsellor: CPCAB's Free Counselling Training Taster' is now live!
The Taster aims to give prospective learners an understanding of the journey to becoming a counsellor, including the skills and knowledge they are likely to acquire on the way. It also offers insights into the counselling landscape and emphasises the benefits of in-person and synchronous online remote learning, providing clarity as individuals start their path toward becoming a counsellor.
We hope this can be a useful tool for our centres to help learners understand what to expect from counselling training and to encourage progression onto a Level 2 qualifications.
If you would like to start using this tool or have any questions, please contact: marketing@cpcab.co.uk
Benefits for our centres:
- Assist in marketing CPCAB courses
- Give prospective learners a taste of what their counselling training may consist of
- Be used as a way of promoting your CPCAB L2 qualification and the progression route
- Establish the benefits of online and in-person studying as opposed to distance learning alternatives
- Inspire learners to pursue a career in counselling
Alternative Level 3 Qualification
Due to new stipulations from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) that all Level 3 qualifications need to provide 150 Guided Learning Hours (GLH) to retain funding, we are developing a fundable alternative Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Studies qualification to meet this new requirement.
This fundable alternative will be ready for centres to apply for in November 2023, and delivery would be approved to start in January 2024.
However, if you are happy delivering our current CST-L3 and your learners are not reliant on funding, rest assured that you can continue delivering the qualification as normal.
We'll be hosting some informative webinars to answer any questions you may have regarding this new L3 qualification. If you'd like to attend these webinars, please click here...
REGISTER NOW
A New CPCAB Level 5 Award in Online and Phone Counselling Practice
Coming Early 2024
CPCAB is delighted to announce we’ll be launching a new online and phone counselling training package in partnership with The Open University. Designed to equip candidates with essential skills and knowledge in online and phone counselling.
In today's digital age, the pertinence of online and phone counselling within the profession has become increasingly evident.
Our unique project places CPCAB's vision at its core – to prepare every candidate to become a compassionate, safe, and effective practitioner.
FIND OUT MORE
CPCAB Tutor
Community Group
Support • Connect • Share
We’re very pleased to see our CPCAB Facebook Tutor Community Group continues to grow! The CPCAB Tutor Community group is a safe, supportive space for tutors to engage with one another and with CPCAB.
This is a collective group with a wealth of experience and knowledge, a great place to network and share ideas. Now that standardisation is underway, this is also an opportunity to keep in touch with the people you meet; providing ongoing support and sharing best practice.
JOIN THE GROUP
The new CPCAB Level 5 Diploma in Counselling Children and Young People
As part of our commitment to developing competent counsellors in a changing and demanding professional landscape, CPCAB has acknowledged the development of competency frameworks for working with this age group, by BACP and NCPS.
Benefits for centres:
- Provides a qualification which meets the needs of counsellors working with young people in the community eg schools, colleges, specialist agencies
- Offers an alternative Level 5 qualification to PC-L5 and CBT-L5
- Follow the familiar assessment structure (internal and external) of the existing Level 5’s
- Uses the current straightforward application and approval process from CPCAB
- Enables candidates to meet professional association requirements for working with this age range
- Gain CPCAB staff and external verifier support
Benefits for candidates:
- Another robust Level 5 qualification, as an alternative to PC-L5 or CBT-L5
- A regulated qualification specifically designed for counsellors wishing to work with children and young people
- Acknowledgement and a formal qualification for those already working with children and young people but without specialist training
- An entry into a range of job and career opportunities – such as school or college counsellor, specialist agency counsellor, an ‘adult’ counsellor working independently wishing to include this age range in their practice
Find out more here...
REGISTER NOW
Did you know ?
The CPCAB website offers a wide range of useful and informative documents for each of our qualifications; but did you know these documents can be downloaded, adapted, and even housed on your own Virtual Learning Environment?
Candidate Reflections Sheet:
In this section, we've shared a Candidate Reflections Sheet which tutors can share with learners on our Level 3 and Level 4 qualifications.
The Candidate reflections sheet gives learners the opportunity to congruently reflect on their own role in group discussion work.
- Download a blank sheet for learners to fill out themselves or the example sheet as a guide
- The sheets and how they can inform personal development as well as criteria and learning reviews can be discussed in class
- Tutors can personalise this sheet for their own courses
Case Discussion Reflection Sheet 2 (Completed Example)
Case Discussion Reflection Sheet 1 (Blank Example)
Level 3 internal case study
When distributing blank CPCAB templates, is there an assumption that the candidate understands what’s expected from them?
CST-L3 Case Study Presentation Template
CST-L3 Case Study Presentation Template ADAPTED
Here, I have taken a blank template for the Level 3 internal case study and created a supplementary document.
By providing a document with guidance (you can create guidance to suit your teaching), I can then take the documents as a teaching and discussion aid. The candidates will all have these ‘pointers’ as they work on the exercise and I can ensure consistency by using the same guidance points across multiple cohorts. See what you think.’
Personalising docs...
In this section we’ll look at how to take a couple of standard resources and develop our own exercise.
CSK-L2 Tutor or Peer Observation of Skills: Let’s look at how to personalise and adapt this document for use at your own centre. In this case, with a focused exercise of your choice or design. See the example below.
CSK-L2 Candidate Self-assessment of Skills: We can also look at how to customise this document to support the same exercise, so the helper can reflect, creating evidence for criteria or to inform a learning review. See the example below.
Observation of Skills document
Adapted Observation of Skills document
Self-Assessment document
Adapted Self-Assessment Document
All tutor documents can be found in qualification documents on the website.
CPCAB Counselling Research Award
We’re very pleased to announce Elaine Moore as the winner of the 2023 CPCAB Counselling Research Award Winner for her paper “Talk with me outside’ Therapists’ experiences of the therapeutic relationship in natural outdoor settings: A qualitative study'.
This qualitative research is about the psychotherapeutic relationship and the possibilities that arise when therapy is taken outdoors and into public spaces for example parks, footpaths and community gardens. The aim is to better understand the experiences of therapists who have gone outside with their clients.
The paper highlights several key findings and suggests that when therapy is taken outside, the psychotherapeutic relationship is enhanced and contributes to the well-being of both practitioner and client.
CPCAB's Jayne Yeates spoke to Elaine about her research and the inspiration behind it, you can watch the full video here:
Would you like to earn while making a difference?
Are you an experienced CPCAB tutor interested in becoming a key member of the CPCAB sessional team? Then, we’d love to hear from you.
You will work alongside CPCAB to maintain the integrity of our qualifications in an ever-changing landscape. The role will deepen your understanding of the CPCAB processes and procedures, providing new knowledge, skills and experience in the workings of an Awarding Organisation (AO) in the counselling training sector. These opportunities are in addition to your role as a tutor where you will receive ongoing training and support from a highly experienced team. The role can increase your confidence as a tutor, and even as a practitioner.
Find out more about Assessor and External Verifier opportunities.
New CPCAB Endings Document for Tutors
As we all know, endings are a part of life. They are part of therapy, and of course they are a part of every qualification for the students and tutors. CPCAB have recently produced a new resource for tutors. This useful document includes tips and techniques which can be used with the students as the course draws to an end. Whether teaching online or face-to-face, there are ideas to manage the ending in a way that models our industry and acknowledges the importance of communication and being part of a wider community.
All Tutor documents can be found in the Qualification Section of the website.
DOWNLOAD PDF
What are we listening to?
PODCAST: Counselling Tutor
We recently featured in the new Counselling Tutors podcast SCoPEd: Summary of Views and Perspectives!
The special edition of the podcast puts questions to CPCAB, the BACP, and NCS. Plus discusses SCoPEd with two practitioners about their perspectives on the new framework.
Some highlights of the podcast include;
- Conversation around Level 4 and Level 7 qualifications
- When we’ll start to see the framework coming into action
- Column alignment for memberships
- Impact on employment
We found the podcast very insightful and we hope it answers some of your questions, however, if you would like to speak to CPCAB directly, please email: contact@cpcab.co.uk
For more info read our SCoPEd announcement
LISTEN NOW