Pre-requisites

None.

Co-requisites

None.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, the student will be able to:

• Explain different theoretical and clinical approaches to foundational qualities of an effective counsellor.

• Critically review the theoretical and practical implications of counselling theory and practice pertaining to therapeutic relationships.

• Plan and execute a working alliance with a client in an integrated and client directed manner.

• Integrate the assessment of the influence of beliefs and assumptions in a client-directed manner.

• Construct a comprehensive treatment plan for a client on the basis of an evaluation of an initial interview.

Unit Description

This unit provides an in-depth exploration of the essential relational qualities relevant to counselling. Learners are encouraged to develop an understanding of these qualities by reflecting on their own past experiences and experiences facilitated during the unit, including requirements to engage with others as a learner-counsellor.

Such exploration shall provide the learner with a springboard for developing an appreciation not only of empathy, acceptance and genuineness but also of the significance of curiosity, hopefulness, power dynamics and the role of culture in the counselling relationship and to develop skills essential to the early stages of counselling.

The unit highlights the value of holding the tension between contrasting and often contradictory ideas, of playing with the experiential possibilities and of allowing a paradoxical security which can live with and at times even thrive in the absence of final and fixed truths.

Teaching Strategies

Teaching strategies include: lectures and tutorials; weekend schools; class discussions; role plays and practice of skills within class; and presentation of instructional material in the form of printed documentation, DVD, video and audio tape and online interaction.

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Unit offerings

Face to face: (Every Year, Semester 1)
Online: (Every Year, Semester 2)

Please note

The Unit Offerings listed above are a guide only and the timetable for any year is the final authority. The College may vary offerings based on demand, regulatory requirements, continual improvement processes or other conditions.

This unit may be available in different modes of delivery i.e. online and face-to-face as listed above. The unit content will not differ between these modes of delivery. There will possibly be a difference in the schedule and/or the prescribed assessment tasks, however both will cover and assess the same content.