Counselling

Rest Less reports that “How to become a counsellor” is the most popular search term in its career-change section.

“People often come to counselling as a second or third career,” says Caroline Jesper, head of professional standards at the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. “But it’s a switch that takes a substantial amount of time, money and dedication. We’d always recommend starting with a part-time counselling-skills course before moving on to full practitioner training. This will give you the opportunity to develop some counselling skills, and it will help you to decide if training as a counsellor is the right thing for you. If you do want to progress to the full practitioner training, then we’d recommend one of BACP’s accredited courses, which can be found at bacp. co.uk. This stage of the training typically takes two years part-time or one-year full-time. Training to be a therapist is not something you can do online in a couple of weeks.”

The cost of training depends on where you train, what courses you take and how long they last. Currently, diploma courses range from £2,200 to £3,000 a year. Foundation degrees can be up to £6,000 a year and master’s degrees between £12,000 and £15,000, depending upon the course provider.