The CPT Advanced Diploma in Counselling Practice ( 450 g.l.h. Level 5 equivalent) (NCPS Accredited)

SYLLABUS:

FOUNDATION UNIT 1: CORE THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY AND APPLICATION OF THEORY TO PRACTICE (130 HOURS TOTAL)

Syllabus includes:

Person-centred/Humanistic Counselling

• Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs
• Carl Rogers and the person-centred approach
• Contemporary developments and theorists of the humanistic approach.
• Therapeutic alliance
• Congruence/Incongruence
• Psychological contact
• The Counselling Process Model
• Empathy / Advanced Empathy
• Humanistic Existential view of the human condition
• Self-actualization
• Core Conditions
• Conditions of worth
• Unconditional Positive Regard
• True self/Ideal Self
• Working with levels of competence
• Self-Awareness
• Phenomenology and Existentialism
• Deliberate practice of core person-centred skills and interventions including therapist self-awareness, empathic understanding, empathic affirmation and validation, exploratory questioning, evocative responding, empathic conjecture, staying in psychological contact in the presence of strong emotion/intense affect, self-disclosure, addressing ruptures and facilitating repair

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

• Personality theory of Aaron Beck
• Faulty thinking and maladaptive interpretations
• Albert Ellis and REBT
• The ABCDE Framework
• Behaviour and Cognitive Restructuring
• Contemporary Developments and CBT theory
• Language and terminology in CBT
• Conditioning
• Irrational Beliefs – Debating/Disputing Irrational Beliefs
• Deliberate practice of core CBT interventions
• Goals/target
• Structuring endings and contracting
• Referring Ethically
• Higher skills in CBT including explaining rationale for CBT approach, establishing goals, negotiating a session agenda, assigning and reviewing between session activities, working with cognitions, behaviours, and emotions, therapist flexibility, responding to alliance ruptures in CBT, responding to client resistance, triad role play extended case vignettes

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

• Freud and Freud’s model of the mind
• Id, Ego, Super Ego
• Functions of the Ego
• Psychosexual stages of development
• Defense Mechanisms
• Transference/Countertransference
• Making interpretations
• Resistance and bringing to awareness
• Strengths and weaknesses of psychodynamic counselling
• Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development
• Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious
• Melanie Klein’s Projective Identification and Splitting
• Winnicott – the nursing triad
• Malan Triangle of Insight
• The hidden self and unfulfilled self; risks in relation to competence
• Margaret Mahler, Bowlby and Ainsworth
• Attachment theory
• Object Relations Theory
• Deliberate practice of core psychodynamic counselling skills including engaging in therapeutic inquiry, being aware of countertransference reactions, deepening emotional experience, making process comments, pointing out defences and inquiring about underlying fear, immediacy, introducing rationale for treatment, making transference interpretations, using metaphors, exploring fantasy, case formulation and history taking, identifying past and present links, using supervision to recognize re-enactments, providing corrective emotional experience.

Unit Assessment:

• Reflective Journal (minimum of 12 Reflective Journal to be submitted, 800 words per journal)
• Written Assignment (Essay 2,500 – 3,000 words)
• Advanced Practice Skills Role Play (Formal assessment in Therapist, Client and Observer Roles)

FOUNDATION UNIT 2: COUNSELLING IN CONTEXT (90 HOURS)  

Syllabus includes but is not limited to:-

• Identity, culture, power and justice
• Anti-discrimination practice and working with differences, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, biomedical factors, gender, sexual orientation, religious practices, neurodiversity.
• Understanding and addressing racial trauma
• Becoming a culturally sensitive practitioner and working with diversity, cultural humility, working with emotions in context and understanding power and privilege
• Counselling in the workplace
• Bereavement and grief counselling
• Counselling in healthcare and educational settings
• Counselling in the voluntary sector
• Counselling and technology – online, social, and use of AI
• Economic, social and political issues and social justice
• Group counselling
• Counselling the elderly
• Drugs and substance abuse
• Brief therapy models – solution-focused, strategic and narrative models
• Counselling in social care settings
• Couples counselling models
• Child and family therapy
• Ethical dilemmas inherent in the practice of counselling within a multiplicity of contextual settings
• Higher skills for multicultural therapy interventions including therapist self-awareness cultural humility, assessing client expectations, reflecting content through a cultural lens, inquiring about identity / cultural opportunities, working with emotions in context, maintaining a not-knowing stance , inquiring about cultural implications of the problem/opportunities, acknowledging therapist limitations, gathering information about safety concerns, talking about sex and success, and repairing relationship ruptures due to microaggressions.

Unit Assessment: 

• 3 Reflective Journal Entries
• Written Assignment (2000-2500 words)
• Student Projects and Class Presentation (accompanied by written project summary 1,500-2,000 words)

FOUNDATION UNIT 3: INTRODUCTION TO SCHEMA THERAPY (50 HOURS)

Syllabus includes:

• Summarize key concepts of schema theory – schemas, modes, coping styles, core emotional needs, schema development and maintenance, schema healing
• Contributions of the different theorists associated with the history and development of schema therapy
• Understand, practice and evaluate interventions of schema therapy
• The key strengths, challenges to and limitations of schema therapy
• Evaluate the skills required for sustaining, evaluating and concluding the therapeutic relationship within schema therapy
• Skills training will include a selection of the following deliberate practice skills, as determined by the Trainer: i) understanding and attunement, ii) supporting and strengthening the healthy adult mode, iii) schema education (beginning to understand current problems in schema terms), iv) linking unmet needs, schemas and presenting problems, v) identifying the presence of angry and vulnerable child modes, vi) limited reparenting for angry and vulnerable child modes, and vii) implementing behavioural pattern breaking through in-session practice and out of session assignments.

Unit Assessment:

• 4 Reflective Journal Entries
• Structured Writing Assignment

NB: Completion of this Unit and the Advanced Diploma course does NOT certify students in Schema Therapy and students will not be permitted to use the title of Schema Therapist, post qualification, without applying for and undertaking a full course of certification training and supervision, and be approved for practice by the International Society of Schema Therapy.

Please see more detail in full syllabus document – download below.

FOUNDATION UNIT 4: EVALUATING COUNSELLING PRACTICE (60 HOURS)

Syllabus includes:

• Research methods and the challenge of research in counselling
• Ethics of counselling research
• Conducting a meaningful enquiry into counselling practice, case study research, qualitative and quantitative methods, outcomes and narrative studies.
• Client, therapist and relational factors in therapeutic change – what works, and for who, does orientation matter?
• Technique and practice factors, reflecting on practice
• Working with client preferences, client and therapist factors in outcomes research.
• UK and EU business systems, procedures, requirements for counselling practices and practitioners

Unit Assessment:

• 3 Reflective Journal Entries
• Lead a Research Paper Discussion – select a primary research publication published since 2020
• Written Assignment – research project proposal (2,000 – 2,500 words)

FOUNDATION UNIT 5: THERAPEUTIC PRACTICE (60 HOURS)

Syllabus includes:

• Ethical principles, values and guidelines in counselling
• Steps to ethical decision-making
• Healthy and safety issues
• Psychopharmacology and understanding illness and medical interventions, psychoactive drugs
• Professional standards and practices in client contracting, confidentiality, and informed consent, maintaining client autonomy, prevention of client exploitation
• Legal issues e.g. record-keeping, data protection
• Role of supervision in ethical practice
• Supervisor – Counsellor working alliance
• Contribution and effectiveness of supervision with regard to counsellors’ and clients’ needs. How development of self-awareness contributes to the effectiveness of the therapeutic relationship and process
• Assessment and diagnosis
• Techniques for client assessment and case conceptualization.
• Understanding common mental health disorders and diagnostic criteria.

Unit Assessment:

• 3 Reflective Journal Entries
• Structured Writing Assignment (2,000 – 2,500 words)

FOUNDATION UNIT 6: COUNSELLING PRACTICUM (60 HOURS)

Syllabus includes:

• Working within legal and ethical requirements as a counselling practitioner
• Knowledge and understanding of a professional ethical framework and its application to counselling practice
• Respond effectively to complex client issues and ethical dilemmas
• Skills for strengthening the therapeutic alliance
• Working with client feedback
• Addressing power imbalances and working with the immediacy of the therapeutic engagement
• Address professional issues for the candidate in regard to counselling placement
• Planning for and mitigating potential areas of conflict between the candidate and counselling placement.
• Effects of supervision on own practice

Unit Assessment:

• 4 Reflective Journal Entries
• Supervision Log
• Supervisor’s Report: initial report at 3 months and final summary report following completion of 100 client hours
• Study of Supervised Practice (to be completed as a result of 100 hours of counselling placement).

Notes:

Total number of guided learning hours = 450 hours

This course is delivered over two years.

Additionally, the counselling placement = 100 client hours

Download a revised list of the dates for 2025-2026 here

Download the course description and syllabus here