Authentic Counselling Training

Certificate in Counselling: Assignments

[Under construction: 23 August 2004]

This document in all parts is copyright © Peter Hughes from the date of construction given above. Please feel free to make use of it for solely personal purposes. However, should you wish to use it for teaching, training, commercial or other purposes, you are required to ask me first.

Assignment 6
Tape and Commentary III

Purpose of the assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to evaluate your counselling practice and understanding.

Tape selection

Review your recent observed practice recorded on video tape. From recorded sessions at least 20 minutes long, select a 20 minute length of tape.

The tape recording should show:

· An appropriate contract and opening.

· The establishing or maintenance of a counselling-type relationship.

· The use of appropriate counselling skills rather than having a conversation.

· An awareness of one's own non-verbal communication.

· A respect for the speaker’s agenda

· A respect for the speaker’s frame of reference.

· An appropriate ending (if within the 20 minutes).

An excellent tape may also show:

· A balance between trust-building and challenge.

· Evidence of deeper empathy.

· The use of the self of the listener.

· The use of simple imagery, including metaphor.

Written commentary

Write a commentary of between 2,000 and 3,000 words regarding the interview. Comment on your counselling practice as evidenced in the recorded interview, and how this relates to a person-centred way of working. As well as describing what you did and how you did it, deepen the discussion to demonstrate your learning and understanding of the process of counselling, with reference to the relevant literature.

In particular you should:

· Discuss in detail how a counselling-type relationship is established.

· Briefly overview the observed counselling practice session, commenting on outcomes for the Speaker.

· Discuss the appropriateness of your counselling-type contract.

· Describe any ethical issues surrounding the observed counselling practice session.

· In detail, describe, identify and evaluate ways in which you attempted to communicate the core conditions.

· Identify ways in which you could have more effectively created the core conditions.

· Identify examples of you staying with the speaker’s agenda, and working within their frame of reference.

· Identify examples of you straying from the speaker’s agenda, and working outside their frame of reference.

· Describe to what extent you developed an appropriate balance between trust and challenge.

· List of references, giving full bibliographical details, including author, year of publication, (title of article if in a journal), title of publication, name of publisher, place of publication.

· Appendix: transcript of interventions.

Assignments for Certificate in Counselling: Essay preparation, Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Counselling_sitemap

Peter Hughes: introduction

p.g.h@btinternet.com