As you grow and develop over the four years, your counselling practice will become more informed and aware. This is central to your development as a counsellor, along with your increasing knowledge of theory, practice and self-development.

Learning about yourself is a key part of the course. This enables you to be clear when working with others as you need to understand your limits and attitudes, so they do not interfere with your practice.

This programme is designed to help you grow your therapeutic capacity to work with a range of client needs. It will give you time to embed your personal and professional development, and prepare you thoroughly for a demanding, yet very rewarding, counselling career.

Entry requirements are flexible. A level 3 academic qualification (or equivalent) is preferred.

The application form invites you to provide a reflective statement and, if invited to interview, you will be assessed in a group discussion exercise and a written task. If you have not studied for some time, we may require further evidence of your study skills in order to demonstrate your readiness for this BA (Hons) programme.

The degree is designed to be fully supportive to those who are new to university study, whatever your age.

This programme will prepare you well for the possibilities for career development and work opportunities in the counselling field.

The clinical placements on the course are good preparation for this. Some of our students have gained placements in domestic violence and sexual assault organisations, hospices, community-based charities (e.g. MIND), the criminal justice system, and student counselling. These placements allow contemporary experience which may lead to employability within similar settings.

Career Pathways

Our graduates have also found roles in school settings, the NHS, further and higher education, agencies, the voluntary sector and as independent practitioners.

In the UK, many graduates enter professions where any degree would be acceptable and so alternative career pathways could include:

• Careers in Social Care - Social work, family support worker
• Advice work - Housing support worker, welfare advice worker
• Youth & Community work - Youth project worker, youth development lead, young person’s mentor
• Education - Learning mentor, student counsellor, schools' wellbeing advisor
• Charity - Community case worker, women’s refugee worker, charity graduate trainee
• Health - Sexual health adviser, wellbeing practitioner
• Community & Criminal Justice - Criminal justice support worker, probation officer

Some of these roles may be accessed directly after completing your degree, as part of an employed graduate scheme, or may require further study and professional qualification.

Helping you find the right career 

Our department has a dedicated professionally qualified Senior Careers Consultant who offers one-to-one impartial advice and guidance. Students also have access to a range of workshops and career events. Previous events have included

• careers with children and young people
• careers in not for profit
• careers in social justice
• Warwick careers fairs throughout the year
• effective CVs & applications.

Find out more about careers support at Warwick.

Developments in counselling and mental health services mean they require practitioners with a varied and deep understanding of an increasing amount of mental health issues and awareness of techniques to support clients. This course aims to equip you to develop those skills, and is designed to prepare you thoroughly for the opportunities and challenges emerging in this exciting field.

You will develop yourself through self-awareness, small group work, counselling practice and academic assignments.

As part of the course, you will find a counselling placement and gain 100 hours of practice in an agency of your choosing. This allows for rich learning in terms of mental health and the presenting problems of the people you will counsel.

The core model is Humanistic and Relational. The foundation of this model is the person-centred approach which establishes the core conditions for therapeutic work which is healing and supports change and growth. From this foundation, you will be introduced to other helpful perspectives that will give you a range of ways of working with clients. This includes a range of humanistic, experiential and psychodynamic approaches (including the Jungian approach), as well as Heron’s facilitative interventions model and the compassion-focused approach. Learning about this range of approaches will enable you to integrate ways of working with the full range of client needs, based on a firm relational foundation.

During the course, you will also cover mental health, culture and diversity, research, and creative therapeutic approaches.

Your personal and academic learning will be well supported by peers, tutors and specialists in academic study skills. You will also develop:

• An in-depth understanding of the underlying philosophy and theories of a relational approach to counselling
• An understanding of how to apply theory to counselling
• A clearer understanding, and awareness of, your own attitudes and behaviour with other people
• Supervised client work in placements
• Insight into counselling and psychotherapy professional developments, as well as the work of other mental health professionals
• An understanding of the importance of working equitably with difference and diversity in counselling and psychotherapy, including race, culture, gender, sexuality, age, social class and learning differences
• Confidence in how to use research, building towards doing a full empirical research project in Year 4, based on a theme relevant to Counselling and Psychotherapy that you are interested in.

Throughout this course, you will develop your ability to work in counselling and psychotherapy. We offer you the opportunity to practise and study at the same time, and to develop your counselling placements with people in all kinds of well supported settings, including the NHS, schools, colleges, universities and community agencies.

The hours required to be completed by students are as follows (students must ensure they can commit to these additional time commitments):

• Year 1 - 30 hours work-based learning
• Years 2- 4 - 100 counselling placement hours + fortnightly supervision
• Plus 20 hours minimum personal therapy across the whole course

Students will find their own placements with support from the course team.

• Applications for 2022/23 are open. Apply online.

Applications received prior to Tuesday 31st May 2022 will be guaranteed to be reviewed and considered for a place on this course (extended deadline). With offers being made as applications are received. Applications received after this date will continue to be reviewed should places be available however we are unable to guarantee they will be considered. The final closing date will be Monday 1 August.

• This course requires students to share information of a personal nature, and dual relationships (where a student knows another person well outside the course) can significantly disrupt the personal and professional development of the students concerned and impact the whole group. We, therefore, reserve the right to defer an applicant’s place on the course, if there is deemed to be two or more students who have a personal relationship joining the course. In these circumstances, the applicant who made the earliest application will be offered the place first, and the other applicant deferred to start in the following academic year.

Tuition fees for Home/EU Students in 2022/23 are as follows:

£4,620 (90 credits) - year 1
*The University will charge Home students £1,540 for each 30 credit module in 2021-22. Fees for subsequent years of the course are to be confirmed.

See Student fees and funding for more information and view potential additional fees.

Additional Fees specific to this programme

• DBS (enhanced) £38 for 2 years, students can then chose to renew annually or bi-annually (TBC for 2021)
• Student membership of BACP £82 annually
• Residential weekend approx. £300 (held in year 1 only)
• Professional indemnity insurance £54-£85 annually

• Placement supervision costs vary but are usually within the range of £60-£100 per hour (in years 2-4). Fortnightly supervision as required by BACP. These costs are influenced by market forces and may increase over the period of the course.

• Personal therapy £35-£55 per hour (min of 20 hours over the whole course)
• Travel costs to and from placements
• Each year students are asked to bring in contributions for a shared lunch, approx. £10 a year.

The University of Warwick is not currently sponsoring students on part time or distance learning courses with a Tier 4 visa and so if you require a visa to study a part time/distance learning course in the UK which is longer than 6 months, you may wish to consult the 'right to study' page on our Student Immigration & Compliance website: https://warwick.ac.uk/study/international/immigration/othervisas/whatvisa before you make an application.

The course starts with a compulsory induction residential weekend in October 2022.

Classes will take place on Tuesdays between 10am-5pm at Westwood campus, University of Warwick.

There will also be one or two Saturday workshops each year; dates are to be confirmed.

Hear from Phil Goss, course director introducing the degree.

This video was recorded on Teams in 2021.

As a new degree, it is working towards accreditation for British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)*.

*BACP requires new courses to be taught through once before accreditation can be finalised and approved. University of Warwick is in contact with the BACP accreditation team in their development and delivery of this new course. Their accreditation assessors are looking forward to visiting during the final year of the first cohort of students in order to complete the accreditation process. Although, there is no guarantee that the course will be accredited BACP and the course team are working together towards this outcome and confidently anticipate that the course accreditation process will be completed by Summer 2025. This training course meets the training part of the eligibility criteria for graduates to become individual members of BACP and go on to become individually accredited by BACP.

University of Warwick has a strong history of delivering accredited counselling courses since 2006. Our BA (Hons.) Person Centred Counselling and the Psychotherapeutic Relationship BACP accreditation has been renewed for a further 5 years in 2022, rewarding the high standard of ethical and professional practice we offer.