In this issue
Features
#promote
Ruth Clowes looks at the importance of marketing your service within your institution
Get the message
Jo Ames outlines why university and college services are well placed to provide online counselling
Course work
Mood Boost is an innovative group approach to working with students with depression, says Dr Denise Meyer
It’s OK not to be OK
Emotional self-care is as important as high achievement, says Doris Ioravici
The positive wider impact of counselling provision in colleges and universities
Patti Wallace makes the case for the wider benefits of embedded counselling services in higher and further education settings
The present moment
Margaret Landale believes that mindfulness can enhance the therapist/client relationship
Updates
A kind of magic?
Peter Jenkins and Tracey Lowden discuss Duty of Care issues in a sixth form college
Regulars
Q&A
Jeremy Christey, new Chair of BACP Universities and Colleges
A day in the life
Head of Counselling at Cambridge University, Géraldine Dufour
Divisional news
Notes from HUCS
Become a BACP adjudicator
Notes from the Staff Counselling special interest group
Eamonn O’Mahoney provides an update on committee changes within the group
Not all articles from this issue are available online. Members and subscribers can download the pdf from the University and College Counselling archive.
From the editor
Welcome to this new edition of the U&CC journal – and a new academic year. It’s perhaps fitting then, that this issue champions so much that is fresh and innovative in approach. We are all aware of the pressure many services are under – in terms of either receiving recognition for the work they do or managing overwhelming client numbers. Very often there is an overlap of both. Perhaps it’s the nature of the confidentiality of our profession that makes counsellors and therapists almost allergic to publicising their achievements.
In this issue Ruth Clowes, who is Media and Communications Manager at BACP, outlines a step-by-step strategy to help ensure that the benefits a counselling service brings to a university or college are valued by the institution’s senior decision makers. As Ruth explains, ‘The more intricately the service is woven into the everyday warp and weft of university life… the less likely it is to be considered a dispensable “add on”.’
The other pressure, of course, is managing client numbers and need. Whilst the value of individual face-to-face work can never be underestimated, it is important to consider alternative ways of supporting clients. In this issue, Jo Ames writes a comprehensive article championing online counselling, as well as outlining the skills and equipment it takes to do it well. Dr Denise Meyer also shares the tools needed for the Mood Boost course – a successful psycho-educational approach to working with students with depression. Both approaches demonstrate the exciting outcomes that can be achieved when one isn’t afraid to consider ‘the new’.
For me, the BACP UC Conference in Exeter was a new experience too. Basking in sunshine, it was a really wonderful opportunity to meet members of the division, get ideas for future issues of the journal and rally contributors to this one.
As editor of the journal, I’m always keen to give space to new writers and new ideas. Please feel free to contact me on the email address below.
Toni Rodgers
Editor
ucceditorial@bacp.co.uk