GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Value of counselling and psychotherapy

The fundamental values of counselling and psychotherapy include a commitment to:

  • Respecting human rights and dignity
  • Ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships
  • Enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application
  • Alleviating personal distress and suffering
  • Fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned
  • Increasing personal effectiveness
  • Enhancing the quality of relationships between people
  • Appreciating the variety of human experience and culture
  • Striving for the fair and adequate provision of counselling and psychotherapy

 

Counselling in Confide

 This information is intended as a statement for clients, referrers, trainers, potential counsellors and staff.

The following are considered to be the cornerstones of counselling with Confide:

1. The relationship between counsellor and client is central to the counselling work. The relationship is based on respect, concern, empathy, genuineness, and acknowledgment of the client's feelings.

2. Feelings and thoughts which the counsellor experiences are used in the counselling sessions, maybe not directly, to inform the counselling.

3. Issues arising out of the relationship between counsellor and client may be used to illuminate the client's patterns of relating.

4. Importance is placed on the client's family history and previous life experiences and relationships, which therefore need to be acknowledged as invariably having a bearing of some kind on the present situation.

5. Counselling sessions last 50 minutes and time boundaries are adhered to firmly. Time limits to the end of counselling are not imposed although time limited counselling can be agreed.

 It is important for counsellors to have theoretical knowledge and experience in personal therapy. They need a secure theoretical and experiential base from which they can develop their own counselling style and use their personality to enhance their skills.

 As they become more experienced, many counsellors incorporate aspects of other counselling models into their practice and this is enriching to their work.