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Abingdon Counselling Training
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
CPCAB, the Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body is the awarding body for your course qualifications. We work with CPCAB to ensure that our counselling courses and their tutors are independently & rigorously assessed, and that we meet CPCAB's professional standards. CPCAB is the only awarding body in the United Kingdom run by counsellors for counsellors which makes it ideally placed to assess the standards to which its centres operate..
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), is a key professional membership body for UK-based counsellors and psychotherapists. It has a role in setting standards and protecting the public and represents the interests of the counselling profession.
To work out where to start, you need to think about where you want to end up. If you want to be recognised by a particular professional organisation, If you want to be recognised by a particular professional organisation, or be acceptable to a particular employer, check with the employer, professional organisation or training school in question, and find out what they need from you to be accepted..
Make sure, if you are selecting a starter-course, to check that it will be a stepping stone to your next-level qualification. Not all Level 2 trainings are equivalent, and may not necessarily be what you need to be accepted on a CPCAB Level 3 training. To know if a prior training is acceptable for entry to a further course, inquire of the centre providing the further training, not the centre offering the previous training, as they may not have up-to-date information.
You will need an internet connection that is reliable and has sufficient bandwidth to support Zoom conferencing and a computer to engage with our trainings, as well as a reliably-available, private space for classwork.
For online sessions our centres use Zoom, which you can download and use for free. Your assignments are submitted via online web-forms, or Powerpoint-compatible files for presentation materials, which you can create and edit in Microsoft Office, or if you prefer, a compatible alternative such as the free-to-use LibreOffice which can be downloaded and used for free from the internet.
Course places are offered to eligible applicants in date order of application. You need to meet the set of criteria listed on our website, and in the course specification for CSK-L2 listed on the CPCAB website, but we do not 'cherry-pick' candidates or compare applicants with each other. Where the course is near to its start-date, our centres may prioritise those people who respond promptly to our request for an interview over those who appear not to be responding, due to the time-constraints of the interview process.
Counselling trainings stretch candidates on occasion and it's possible that you might determine yourself out of your comfort zone fromt time to time. Your interviewer may explore whether you are in a life-situation where you can cope with this. As an example, they may check how robust your support-system is outside the classroom setting, to what degree your competing life-responsibilities currently weigh on you, and for life-events which are contraindications to setting out on the training (eg. a recent bereavement). If necessary our centres may suggest that you reapply later or (normally for those progressing on their existing training path) we may make an offer which is conditional on your engagement in counselling.