With COVID-19 and social distancing, online counselling has become much more of a consideration for counsellors and psychotherapists—and sometimes a necessity. Fortunately, quite soon into the pandemic, professionals in this field made freely available (or at low cost) CPD programmes to support therapists working in this modality. This blog gives a brief review of two of the main provisions now available for therapists in the UK. Just to say, it is an entirely personal review of the programmes, and based on a ‘looking over’ rather than a full and in-depth engagement with either.
Three important things to note. First, both programmes indicate that they are for qualified therapists rather than those in training. Second, they are also for therapists transferring their work with clients online, rather than commencing with new clients in online therapy. Third, both make it clear that they are not offering a full or qualified online therapy training (some suggestions for that are at the bottom of this blog).
How to do Counselling Online: A Coronavirus Primer
This programme was jointly developed by The Open University (OU) and the BACP as a response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It was written by Naomi Moller and Andreas Vossler who, for me, are amongst the most trustworthy and informed voices in the counselling field in the UK (both academics at the OU).
The programme is estimated to take six hours of study, and you can gain a ‘digital badge’ and ‘statement of participation’ on completion.
On the positive side, the programme gives some clear, useful, and evidence-based tips on the different forms of online therapy. It’s experiential as well as didactic, with lots of quizzes, exercises, and space for open reflection. I found it, in general, put together in a very professional way. A number of transcripts of online counselling are provided to concretely ground what is being presented. I found it generally quite helpful and learnt from it, both around practical areas like GDPR consideration and skills, like the online disinhibition effect. There’s a wide range of useful resources that it links to, like online client information sheets. Feedback I’m seeing suggests that many counsellors have found it very helpful as a basic introduction to the area.
Some of the issues I had with it, a number of which are generic to online training:
I found the registration quite challenging, which wasn’t a great start, and ended up somewhere on the OU site trying to register for their university. In the end it was very simple but I did get lost along the way.
Some of the open-ended reflective activities, to me, felt a bit ‘empty’, in that I wasn’t really sure what to say or what was being asked, and ended up completing them with just a few lines. From what I could work out also, there also wasn’t any way of downloading what I had written (I was expecting to be presented with it all at the end, and wasn’t), so my reflections all seemed lost in cyberspace somewhere.
With the quizzes, some of the answers seemed a bit simplistic or random, and I wasn’t entirely sure that the ‘right’ ones were right. Having said that, I remember, when working on the Counselling MindEd e-learning programme that there were similar challenges, so this is not an easy one to get right.
If someone wanted to, they could zip through the programme pretty quickly. There’s no way of telling how long someone’s been on it, and it’s pretty easy to ‘game’ the answers on a number of the quizzes and exercises. So there’s the possibility of people saying that they’ve completed it and getting the certificate without having really engaged, though there is a quiz at the end which does require some engagement with the course to successfully complete.
COVID-19 Telehealth course
This programme was developed by Kate Anthony, probably the foremost figure in the online therapy field in the UK for many years, and colleagues in the Online Therapy Institute. It’s indicated as 8 hours CPD. The programme can be freely undertaken (and they indicate that students, volunteers and unwaged do not need to pay); but otherwise it requests a contribution from users: up to £110 for full time/waged, and £10-25 for part time/low waged. Whereas the BACP/OU programme focuses on a range of non-face-to-face counselling methods (e.g., text-based asynchronous counselling, phone counselling) the focus of this programme is primarily on video conferencing-based therapy.
The strengths of this programme is that it gives very clear and helpful guidance on a range of contractual, ethical, and practical issues when working online rather than face-to-face. It’s all very directly applicable to therapeutic work. There’s a specific section on working with children and young people, which is great to see.
Some of the issues I had with it, though:
The programme is very text based/didactic, with long screens of writing: to a great extent, it felt more like reading a book than engaging with a mulitmodal, interactive online programme. Compared with the OU/BACP programme, there are only a small number of reflective exercises and limited case examples—though there is an extended video discussing online work with young people.
Again, there’s no way to record how long someone has been on the programme, and here there’s no test at the end to assess engagement.
In a few instances, some of the content seemed to be dated, or badly laid out, and some of it seemed a bit confusing.
Conclusion
It’s fantastic that both the Online Therapy Training Institute, and the BACP/OU team, have been so generous in making these programmes available. Both give essential information for qualified counsellors who are moving work with clients online. If you have had to do so, and you haven’t engaged with one of these programmes yet, I would definitely suggest you do. There’s a wealth of information on both programmes that can help to ensure ethical, effective, and informed online practice. Between the two programmes, if you like something more interactive (and don’t mind some of the over-simplification that that can involve), and if you are working online in ways other than video conferencing, then the BACP/OU programme may be more suitable. But if you prefer text-based learning, and particularly if you are moving to video conferencing rather than other forms of digital contact, then the Online Therapy Institute course may be more suited.
There are a number of more extended courses for a comprehensive training in online therapy. Ones that I am aware of are:
Counselling Tutor’s Online and Telephone Counselling Course: 80 hours, and I’m receiving lots of incredibly positive feedback from people who have done it;
Online Therapy Institute’s Certified Cyber Therapist Training;
The Academy for Online Counselling and Psychotherapy’s Diploma in Online Counselling and Psychotherapy;
Online Training for Counsellors’ Diploma in E-Counselling Theory and Practice.
You can find out about these and other training programmes at the website of the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online (ACTO). Needless to say, I am just listing the programmes above and am not endorsing them in any way. Having said that, I’d love to know what other people think of these programmes, or other one that might be out there that support this move from face-to-face to online. Do write in the comments below.
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