Training and Supervision for Counselling in Action

Windy Dryden, Brian Thorne, Windy Dryden, Brian Thorne

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1991
• Print ISBN: 9780803983366
• eBook ISBN: 9781446239254
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Education in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

`An excellent compilation..... Given the explosion in the demand for both counselling and supervision, this book should be required reading for all those putting a toe in these complex waters. However, I think it is also a salutary guide for those already practising as trainers and supervisors. I found the issues raised stimulated me to think again about my own practice and to profit from that exercise? - Counselling, The Journal of The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy

This accessible book explores the issues involved in both the training and supervision of counsellors and in the preparation of those who are to undertake supervisory and training roles. The number of training courses is growing and counsellors must undergo supervision if they are to be accredited by professional bodies. In this volume, leading trainers and supervisors from different counselling traditions discuss the responsibilities and the professional and practical issues involved, and a trainee and supervisee give an insider?s view of what it feels like to be in these positions. The closing chapter deals with the important issue of training for counsellor trainers and supervisors.

PART 1 TRAINING

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1	Key Issues in the Training of Counsellors

Brian Thorne and Windy Dryden

Counselling comes of age

When at the beginning of 1985 the British Association for Counselling set up its Working Group on the Recognition of Counsellor Training Courses it could justifiably be said that counselling had come of age in Britain. Interestingly enough this event occurred almost 20 years after the first appearance of fulltime British counsellor training programmes (in the universities of Reading and Keele) and some five years after the Association’s initial scheme for the accreditation of individual counsellors. Only after such a lengthy gestation period, it seemed, was the counselling movement sufficiently confident of its own coherence and identity to begin in earnest on the detailed study of what it is that is required to equip a person to fulfil the arduous and demanding role of the professional counsellor. Indeed, it is only comparatively recently that the notion of a counselling profession as such has gained widespread acceptance and in some circles the image of the counsellor as a well-meaning but essentially untrained dispenser of comfort and sympathy continues to die hard.

Inevitably, the early training programmes were, to a large extent, in the hands of non-counsellors and as a result the focus of training was often uncertain. Clinical and educational psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists, and even psychoanalysts, were involved in the formation of an essentially new kind of therapeutic helper, and not unnaturally they tended to develop models of training which were much coloured by their own experience and professional identities. Furthermore there was a sense in which trainees were made to feel that they were being prepared for an activity which was essentially ancillary to or even inferior to the more ‘professional’ work of their trainers. The saving grace in all this was undoubtedly the frequent presence of American practitioners on the staff of those courses which developed in British universities during the late 1960s and 1970s. Distinguished professors of counselling, eminent both in practice and scholarship, were keen to take up Fulbright awards in the United Kingdom, and as a result leading figures in the American counsellor-education field made substantial contributions in these early years to the work of counsellor training courses in the Universities of Keele, Reading and Aston in Birmingham. Many of the students from these pioneering courses subsequently gained posts of influence, particularly in educational institutions, and it was not long before many of them found themselves taking a training role in addition to their clinical work. The emergence of the British practitioner/trainer had a significant effect on training provision for it was now increasingly possible to design courses which drew on the actual experience of practising British counsellors as well as on the well-established tradition from across the Atlantic. Gradually, too, trainers from other disciplines lost their primary role and courses became more clearly focused as they passed into the hands of those who were proud to call themselves counsellors and did not owe their principal allegiance to another profession.

Not all the developments prior to 1985 took place on the campuses of universities and polytechnics. The Marriage Guidance Council (MGC) in particular was much preoccupied with its training procedures and it is not without significance that the very word ‘counsellor’ was for many years associated mainly with MGC and its work in the field of marital and relationship difficulties. The increasing demand for the services of marriage-guidance counsellors presented the Council with formidable challenges in the training field and it is no small tribute to the dedication and imagination of marriage-guidance trainers that ‘Relate’, as it is now called, is currently responding to more clients than ever and that both the numbers and the effectiveness of counsellors operating in this context have increased out of all recognition.

The field of pastoral care and counselling was perhaps the other most influential area for training initiatives. Here, again, many of the pioneers drew extensively on American experience, but the long tradition of social involvement in the British churches meant that there were many Christians, both ordained and lay, who were keen to apply the insights of counselling psychology to the care of hurt and wounded souls in their own communities. Frank Lake and his Clinical Theology Association and the growth of the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and its affiliated centres are two of the most striking examples of organizations where commitment to training was and remains central to their operation. Indeed, there are many people in Britain who owe much if not all of their counselling training to pastoral agencies of this kind but who would themselves claim little or no Christian allegiance. It is perhaps a mark of the strength of the pastoral care and counselling movement that it has always encouraged co-operation not only across the Christian denominations but also with the secular world of counselling and therapy. Significantly, when the British Association for Counselling was founded in 1977 it was the Association for Pastoral Care and Counselling (together with the Association for Student Counselling) which agreed to relinquish its previous independence and autonomy in order to ensure the satisfactory ‘birth’ of the new generic and secular organization.

The BAC Working Group on the Recognition of Counsellor Training Courses which met for the first time in January 1985 drew its membership from all the main streams of training experience and expertise described above. There were those who owed their training (and most of their clinical experience) to the universities and polytechnics while others were leading figures from the field of pastoral care and counselling. A third force was provided by a seasoned marriage-guidance tutor. What is more, many of the group had experience of training provided both by statutory educational institutions and by private agencies. Indeed, so wide and varied was the experience of the group members that it is perhaps surprising that three years later they were able to present unanimous recommendations to the British Association concerning the essential ingredients of a counsellor training programme (British Association for Counselling, 1988). In the process of their work they had been forced, sometimes painfully, to face all the key issues which the training of counsellors inevitably presents if it is to be undertaken with the seriousness and thoroughness which the counsellor’s role undoubtedly requires. It is to these issues that we now turn.

What should be learned and why

Self-exploration

For the counsellor trainer one of the most daunting issues that has to be faced at the outset of any course is the fact that if things go well they will not go smoothly. The reason for this is that training, if it is to be effective, must involve a high degree of self-exploration on the part of trainees with the aim of increasing their self-awareness and self-knowledge. Even in those therapeutic traditions where the emphasis is on clients’ behavioural change or the modification of cognitive processes it is nonetheless accepted that an unaware counsellor leading an unexamined life is likely to be a liability rather than an asset. By definition, however, self-exploration leads to new discoveries and often sudden movement into unknown psychological terrain. Some of these developments are likely to be disturbing and disorienting with the result that almost all trainees at some stage of their training are likely to experience periods of distress or bewilderment and may even at times become subject to incapacitating anxiety or depression. Notoriously, too, relationships with spouses and other family members are liable to undergo considerable upheaval or even to founder altogether. The trainer is therefore presented with two closely related tasks: how to ensure that trainees are given adequate opportunity for self-exploration and how to establish the kind of structure which will hold and support those who find themselves struggling with new and unexpected discoveries about themselves.

There are those who believe that these requirements can only be met by ensuring that every trainee undergoes personal therapy as an obligatory part of training. Without such provision, it is argued, there can be no guarantee that the trainee will confront in a systematic and thorough manner those areas of his or her life and personality which are a potential source of difficulty or conflict. What is more, an insistence on personal therapy has the additional advantage of making sure that the trainee has a real and substantial experience of being in the client’s chair. These are powerful arguments but not all trainers are convinced by them. Those who oppose obligatory personal therapy (and there are none, we believe, who would question the value of personal therapy which is sought voluntarily by a trainee) do so on the grounds that the therapy rel ationship itself can serve as a means of evading important interpersonal difficulties which may be part of the trainee’s experience both within the course and in his or her personal life. Central to this criticism is the fear that some trainees will see personal therapy as the arena for self-exploration (within limits) and will feel entitled to remain somewhat aloof and withdrawn in other areas of the training programme. Those who espouse this point of view will place heavy emphasis on the concept of the training group itself -or a subgroup within it – as the chief therapeutic environment for the development of self-awareness. In this model the trainees are encouraged to see the course community as the context both for self-exploration and for finding support in times of particular difficulty. Trainers, supervisors and personal therapists, where they exist, may have important roles to play in offering additional or specific help but they are not there so that trainees can ‘siphon off’ important personal material which belongs more appropriately to the group as a whole. It should be remembered that membership of a group can itself be a powerful trigger for self-exploration. Groups and organizations frequently present individuals with new challenges and new threats which can only be faced by a willingness to be open to the strengths and vulnerabilities that are thereby revealed. In this way the course community may well serve a dual function: it can be the therapeutic arena for facing those very insights into the self which it has itself provoked.

Clearly, self-exploration can occur in a variety of different contexts and for some trainees, indeed, the opportunity to be quietly with themselves as they study for an essay or reflect on a day’s work is more productive than the most dramatic encounter group. For the trainer, however, there can be no assumption that such self-exploration will take place automatically. The course design and the apportioning of time must reflect the high priority given to ensuring that such exploration is central to the counsellor’s apprenticeship and not an optional extra. What is more, a course through its structure, needs to recognize that many and possibly all trainees will experience pain and distress as they gradually confront themselves more honestly and courageously: they should not be left with nowhere to go and nobody to whom they can turn when such testing times occur.

Work with clients

Difficult as it is to believe, there are counselling courses where trainees never meet a client. The reasoning behind such a bizarre state of affairs is that fellow trainees are deemed to constitute the clientele and to provide more than enough material for counselling practice. The inadequacy of such reasoning is not difficult to expose for it is clear that trainees on a course are unlikely to be motivated by the various and often pressing needs which bring ‘normal’ clients to the counsellor’s door. Even in those instances where genuinely felt concerns and difficulties are experienced, the fact that the ‘client’ is likely to be well known to the ‘counsellor’ introduces a factor into the therapeutic relationship which strikingly distinguishes it from the usual case-load of the practising counsellor in the ordinary course of events. Indeed, it is not uncommon for many counsellors to refuse in principle to counsel those who are friends or even passing acquaintances.

The willingness of some course organizers to settle for this unsatisfactory method of providing clients for trainees is undoubtedly prompted by the difficulty which often arises in attempting to set up a valid counselling experience for course members. It is not always easy to persuade counselling agencies to welcome trainees, and where students themselves are left with the responsibility of arranging their own placements they may find that they carry little credibility. The issues here are complex. Clearly it is essential that trainees have clients but it is also understandable that counselling agencies or general practitioners, for example, should be hesitant about letting loose unskilled beginners on their clients or patients. Questions which have to be addressed include the point at which trainees should first be permitted to see clients. From the trainer’s point of view the sooner the student has some ‘real’ experience, the more likely it is that he or she will be able to relate theory to practice. On the other hand it could be argued that from the client’s point of view, and from that of a counselling agency, it is of considerable importance that the trainee already possess a modicum of theoretical knowledge and has had some opportunity to develop basic counselling skills. Whichever policy is adopted it is clearly crucial that close and frequent supervision is provided for the trainee and that his or her case-load is kept to two or three clients at any one time for at least the initial stages of the training programme. A policy which dictates that a trainee should have only one client at a time is more questionable for there is a danger that the single client can become of such critical significance to the trainee that there is an overinvestment in securing a successful ‘outcome’.

The provision of supervision is often fraught with problems. Inexperienced trainees are naturally anxious and lacking in self-confidence and may require frequent reassurance. The accessibility of the supervisor, both in person and on the telephone, is of major importance and if an agency is also providing field supervision it is less than helpful to a trainee if the styles and even the therapeutic orientation of the two supervisors concerned are widely divergent. If a course only provides group supervision it is important that the group is small enough and the sessions of sufficient duration for all members to present their work regularly and in depth.

It is often claimed by students on teacher training courses that the real learning occurs on teaching practice. Much the same could be said of the counselling practice and for this reason it is desirable that trainees have the opportunity to work with a variety of clients during this training period and to experience both short- and long-term counselling relationships. The supervision requirements for such practice are considerable and there are obvious resource implications, which will be considered later.

The acquisition of counselling skills

Fellow trainees may not constitute an appropriate source for clientele but they undoubtedly provide the best possible milieu for developing counselling skills. Skills training offers trainees the opportunity to isolate and analyse specific responses to clients in a way which is scarcely possible within the context of a normal counselling relationship. Such training is often enhanced by the use of audio and video equipment which permits the trainee to carry out a detached exploration of small segments of interaction and to investigate the impact of particular verbal responses and the power of non-verbal communication. The skills which are being developed may vary from one therapeutic orientation to another but the capacity to form a therapeutic alliance with clients will be common to them all. The person-centred trainee, for example, is likely to devote much attention to increasing the repertoire of empathic responses whereas the cognitive-behavioural counsellor may be keen to practise interventions which impinge on self-defeating thinking and behavioural patterns. Both trainees, however, through the intensive practice of specific skills, will be familiarizing themselves with the essential tools of their trade but will be doing this in a context where the skills cannot be divorced from attitudes and from a consideration of the relationship which is being forged with the client. At least, this must be the hope, for the danger of skills training which is conducted in a vacuum is that the trainee can emerge at the end armed with a kit of techniques and strategies but little capacity to develop the kind of relationship where those skills can be creatively employed. Trainers of all traditions have constantly to be on their guard so that they do not encourage the emergence of clever technicians rather than sensitive counsellors.

Counselling skills training is likely to take up much of the time in the formal timetabling of a course and it presents several operational difficulties. For most trainees it is likely to be one of the most threatening of their activities and has therefore to be approached with delicacy and with a regard for individual differences. Some students, for example, take readily to role-playing or to appearing on a video whereas others must work through much anxiety before they a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Part 1 Training
• Part 2 Supervision
• Part 3 Training Counsellor Trainers and Supervisors
• Appendices
• BAC Code of Ethics and Practice for the Supervision of Counsellors
• Index