Are your students looking to use counselling skills to enhance their existing helping role? Are they taking the first steps towards becoming a professional counsellor? This practical guide will provide readers with the ideal ‘way-in’, showing them what helping and counselling is all about.  

Part 1: Counselling Skills will introduce readers to the underpinning knowledge and practical tools needed to develop a range of helping skills for use in a variety of helping roles, showing what it means to work safely and ethically.  

Part 2: Counselling Studies will help them take their understanding further by considering in detail important theories and professional issues, preparing them to work as a professional counsellor.

Part 3: Counselling Study Skills will offer practical advice and hints and tips to help them make the best start on their counselling portfolio, including journal and essay writing skills, research skills and how to get inspired and overcome blocks to  learning.  

The new edition now includes a more detailed discussion of key theories, has a new chapter on self care, and is fully up to date with the occupational and professional standards and ethical frameworks.

Packed full of practical activities and written in a supportive conversational style, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn counselling skills or embarking on their first stage of training to be a counsellor.

This counselling handbook is extremely informative for the new helper studying counselling for the first time. It links particularly well to the CPCAB level 2 programme .... The material in the book is easily accessible and well explained with many practical examples and exercises...I′d highly recommend this book to anyone starting out in counselling as I think you would find it supports your learning well. It even includes a chapter on essay writing skills!

I find this book informative. It breaks everything down and shows good examples. Covers main theorists and the main approaches. Easy enough to follow for beginners. 

I found it useful with information laid out in clear and simple terms...there have been a couple of times when another book has been too confusing and I have been able to have it explained clearly by the CPCAB book. 

I found "Counselling Skills and Studies" a superb introduction into the world of Counselling.  Approaching the subject with a view to a second career the book felt pitched perfectly.  A clear and concise style pervaded throughout and the format of the book lends itself to good structured learning.  Never teacherly, the writing spoke to me and the use of conversational examples was effective.  The simplification and analysis of the 3 modalities (Psychodynamic / Person Centered / CBT) was invaluable for me as I grasp these new terms and the final section looking at  Study Skills will be an essential reference for me as I progress through my studies.

I initially bought this book upon starting my CPCAB Level 2 Counselling Skills course and found it to be a hugely informative introduction to counselling. However, this book turned into my counselling companion and I continue to regularly refer to it despite now being in my first year of a counselling diploma. The breakdown of the book into 3 parts makes it ideal to pinpoint what will be most helpful, the question and answer style and overall layout is excellent. I highly recommend this book to any future or current counselling students.

Generally the book is good, easy to understand and the way it gives various examples is good.

Fiona is an experienced counsellor, supervisor and trainer and was Head of Qualifications at CPCAB for 13 years before moving to BACP to take up a series of roles as Head of Professional Standards, Chief Professional Standards Officer and Deputy CEO until 2023.  She has always championed vocational training as an important route into the counselling profession and has a background in delivering counselling programmes in Further Education. Fiona is a contributory author to Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy (SAGE, 2010). Traci Postings is an experienced counsellor and supervisor and has taught extensively in adult education. She has been a training consultant in the homelessness and addiction sectors, and compiled a training manual highlighting the value of counselling skills in health and social care settings.  More recently, Traci has been involved in qualification and competence development, being committed to promoting and achieving high standards in the counselling professions. Barry was an experienced therapist within the person-centred family of psychotherapy and counselling and a long-standing staff member of CPCAB, where they worked most recently as EDI Professional Lead and Counselling Qualifications Professional for Tailor-Made Qualifications.  Anthony Crouch is a counselling psychologist and the founder and CEO of CPCAB and the Counselling Channel. His passionate belief in high quality counselling training led to the development of the CPCAB model in the early 1990s which has been reviewed regularly over the past two decades to incorporate the latest research on effective counselling. Anthony is also the author of Inside Counselling (SAGE, 1997).