Counselling as a Profession from Sri Lanka Foundation - your Education Service Partner
It may gratify you to know that you may have taken the role of a counsellor at least once in your life. Counselling is a highly sensitive life tool that is essential in any context, be it work related or domestic, social or individual, natural or manmade to manage and surmount stressful emotional situations through a relationship of trust and confidence. Need for counselling as a full-fledged profession is becoming more popular in the present day world owing to the escalating and stressful competition and widening of differences between individuals, groups communities and nations and propagating menace of disasters and catastrophes.
Counselling as commonly known has a clearly defined scientific foundation, clinical methodology and psychological approach, thus as a subject it encompasses many fields important for mental health and wellbeing. Though limited in application due to scanty exposure, Education and Health fields of Sri Lanka have contained counselling as a productive tool to meet persistent and acute issues lingering in the society. There is an emerging trend from occupational and industrial sector of Sri Lanka for counselling.
In this very context introduction of the Higher National Diploma in Counselling by Sri Lanka Foundation has been an important milestone not only for Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF), but also for the field of counselling of Sri Lanka. This initiative taken by SLF, the National Trainer vested with the responsibility of promoting social progress and values of Democracy, Human Rights and Good Governance, almost a decade ago, would help set training benchmarks for the field of counselling in the country.
Knowing the dimensions of the local counselling field and the barriers that the practitioners face, the Sri Lanka Foundation, has evolved to fill the vacuum that has been created in recognizing and popularizing counselling as a profession. There is a growing threat of incompetent and bogus counsellors due to the prevalent unfulfilled demand for counsellors in the country.
Amongst the training goals of the Sri Lanka Foundation, is to benchmark the Higher Diploma level qualification as the entry level for a practicing counsellor. This is very important as there is no national regulatory body in Sri Lanka to govern the practice of counsellors, accredit their qualifications and skill levels and provide compulsory registration. Following the precursor many other educational institutes have also have started Higher Diploma level training in counselling, which is very encouraging.
Becoming a professional counsellor, requires a rigorous training which involves full time devotion, commitment and adeptness to reconcile with serious behavioral and personal level psychological changes. Sri Lanka Foundation meets this purpose with one to one supervision and training by professional psychologists. The programme accompanies a strict personal guidance and training from a Clinical Psychologist registered in the Sri Lanka Medical Council, which is a rare training opportunity and offers internship experiences which help the students apply the concepts and theories to gain hands on experience prior to earmarking on a fresh career.
There is a significant leap in the Counselling training that the SLF wishes to offer to budding learners who aspire for a firm foundation in Counselling, starting from this year 2016. SLF now offers its accelerated Higher National Diploma programme integrating basic and advanced level training in to one training programme as (ND plus HND) specially targeting school leavers and those who seek a career in the field of counselling. This would provide the trainees the opportunity to receive training which is exclusively focused on producing a professional counsellor. This training will be eighteen months period, where individuals are enrolled after their Advanced Level examination. This would serve as a great career path in a rewarding field with many opportunities for school leavers as counsellors.
As at today counsellors produced by the Sri Lanka Foundation are serving in the fields of Health & Education, Government Departments, Corporate sector, Humanitarian missions, Social Service Organizations, Civil Societies, Foreign missions etc.
Sri Lanka Foundation is blessed with ample training infrastructure, facilities and a conducive environment in the heart of the Colombo city to conduct and host training programmes for the benefit of the society.