Programme Requirements

Attendance

In each year of the programme, you will attend 10 teaching weekends (see Dates and Delivery link). Attendance on all weekends is compulsory. The April unit will be a residential weekend lasting from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon at Cumberland Lodge, a beautiful Grade II listed country house in the heart of Windsor Great Park. There are no costs for accommodation and meals on this residential, which are fully included within your course fee.

In addition to the teaching weekends, you will need to set aside at least one day a week over the life of the programme, to commit to your studies. Once you are in placement, working regularly with vulnerable clients, you will need to set aside at least one half a day a week in addition. This is a full-time training, and although you can complete it whilst you are working part time, it is important that you are able to ringfence one to two days a week to be able to get the most from this course.

Additional Costs

As with all counselling and psychotherapy trainings at Metanoia, you will need to be in weekly personal therapy throughout your training, and fortnightly clinical supervision whilst in placement.

• Personal counselling

As with all counselling and psychotherapy trainings at Metanoia, you will need to be in weekly personal therapy throughout your training, for a minimum of 30 hours per year. All personal counselling needs to be with a Metanoia approved person-centred counsellor. Please note that the cost for counselling is not included in the course fees and needs to be funded separately by the student.  

• Supervised client hours

Students can start placement towards the end of year one when they have passed their skills observations and been approved by their primary tutor. By the completion of training the student will have undertaken a minimum of 150 hours of client work supervised by the primary supervisor. Primary supervisors will submit a supervisory report every year.

• Supervision

Regular supervision is an integral part of counselling training. We require you to have a supervisor in place before seeing clients and to have had at least two sessions with them to establish a working relationship.  Students then need supervision fortnightly in line with BACP requirements for trainees in clinical practice.  All Metanoia students need to arrange supervision with a Metanoia-approved person-centred primary supervisor, in consultation with their primary course tutor.

Please note that the cost for supervision is not included in the course fees and needs to be funded separately by the student.  Placements sometimes offer group or individual supervision which can count towards your monthly requirement.

Assessments

Assessments are varied. We make use of a broad range of assessment types, including group presentations, creative activities, essays, practice recordings, and practical assessments.  Your assessment schedule is spread out throughout the year, so that you are never overwhelmed with multiple tasks. We also prepare you and support you to be ready for every assessment.

Additional Support

Students who have, or suspect that they have, a neurodifference or other disability, are supported on this programme. We aim to adapt all our activities to make this course equally accessible to everyone.

Student Voice

Monthly community meetings online enable us to stay in touch, and for students to give personal feedback and have conversations with each other across the year groups, and with tutors and the director of studies. We also operate a range of additional ways for students to feed back to us, and help us to improve, including Student Representatives, Staff-Student Committee Meetings, anonymous feedback, and monthly surveys. We take student feedback seriously, and we aim for students to have an excellent experience throughout this training.