Counselling Skills and Studies

Third Edition (Updated Edition)

Other Titles in:
Counseling & Psychotherapy | Counseling Skills | Professional Issues

May 2024 | 360 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

Are you looking to use counselling skills to enhance your existing helping role? Are you taking the first steps towards becoming a professional counsellor? This practical guide will provide you with the ideal introduction, showing you what helping and counselling is all about.

Part 1: Counselling Skills will introduce readers to the underpinning knowledge and practical tools needed to develop a range of helping skills for use in a variety of helping roles, showing what it means to work safely and ethically.

Part 2: Counselling Studies will help them take their understanding further by considering in detail important theories and professional issues, preparing them to work as a professional counsellor.

Part 3: Counselling Study Skills will offer practical advice and hints and tips to help them make the best start on their counselling portfolio, including journal and essay writing skills, research skills and how to get inspired and overcome blocks to learning.

The Third Edition includes new content on counselling skills competencies; working with diverse client groups; online counselling; new case studies, tips and activities.

Packed full of practical activities and written in a supportive conversational style, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn counselling skills or embarking on their first stage of training to be a counsellor.

Part I: Counselling Skills

Chapter 1: Using counselling skills ethically and safely

Chapter 2: Establishing a helping relationship

Chapter 3: Working empathically as a helper

Chapter 4: Focusing on the helpee’s needs and concerns

Chapter 5: Using self-awareness in helping work

Chapter 6: Using counselling skills

Chapter 7: Using reflection and feedback to enhance counselling skills

Part II: Counselling Studies

Chapter 8: Preparing to work within an ethical and legal framework as a counsellor

Chapter 9: Understanding the counselling relationship

Chapter 10: Understanding difference and diversity to develop empathic understanding

Chapter 11: Working within a user-centred approach to counselling

Chapter 12: Using theory and insight to increase self-awareness

Chapter 13: Understanding theories of counselling in practice

Chapter 14: Using supervision to support counselling

Part III: Counselling Study Skills

Chapter 15: Motivation and blocks to learning

Chapter 16: Essay writing skills

Chapter 17: Journal writing skills

Chapter 18: Self-care

Chapter 19: Critical thinking

Chapter 20: Experiential learning

Chapter 21: Research in counselling and helping work

Having many copies of the first and second edition of this title which are always being borrowed. I was very pleased to see the latest edition. It covers the content on many of our counselling syllabuses at different levels. I plan to get several copies for our shelves

Professor Ruth Malaney

LRC, Guildford College

June 25, 2024

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A good practical introductory book for those wanting to learn about counselling skills and students at Certificate level thinking to pursue counselling as a career. The authors highlight key aspects of ethical practice including safety in using counselling skills as well as the importance of self-awareness and self-care in helping work.
The book includes helpful links to videos to support the learning.

Mrs Ana Paula Wellbrook

Counselling and Psychology, City Lit

July 15, 2024

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Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter 3_Working empathically as a helper

Fiona Ballantine Dykes

Fiona is an experienced counsellor, supervisor and trainer and was Head of Qualifications at CPCAB for 13 years before moving to BACP to take up a series of roles as Head of Professional Standards, Chief Professional Standards Officer and Deputy CEO until 2023. She has always championed vocational training as an important route into the counselling profession and has a background in delivering counselling programmes in Further Education. Fiona is a contributory author to Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy (SAGE, 2010). More About Author

Traci Postings

Traci Postings is an experienced counsellor and supervisor and has taught extensively in adult education. She has been a training consultant in the homelessness and addiction sectors, and compiled a training manual highlighting the value of counselling skills in health and social care settings. More recently, Traci has been involved in qualification and competence development, being committed to promoting and achieving high standards in the counselling professions. More About Author

Barry Kopp

Barry was an experienced therapist within the person-centred family of psychotherapy and counselling and a long-standing staff member of CPCAB, where they worked most recently as EDI Professional Lead and Counselling Qualifications Professional for Tailor-Made Qualifications. More About Author

Anthony Crouch

Anthony Crouch is a counselling psychologist and the founder and CEO of CPCAB and the Counselling Channel. His passionate belief in high quality counselling training led to the development of the CPCAB model in the early 1990s which has been reviewed regularly over the past two decades to incorporate the latest research on effective counselling. Anthony is also the author of Inside Counselling (SAGE, 1997). More About Author

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