So we are in our second 
and final year as diploma students now, and it does 
feel different; we are no longer beginners. There 
is not the blind panic about finding a placement or 
getting to know each other; relationships within the 
group feel reasonably 
settled. But there are other concerns being aired over coffee or lunch, often 
focused on numbers.

1. We are required by 
the course to design a piece 
of counselling research and those of us unfamiliar with this type of work blanched 
at the session on 
quantitative methodology; 
the thought of having to process findings through Excel until we have a line graph or a pie chart… but 
we can learn, this is doable. 

2. We are still mindful 
of the magic number 150, 
and busy racking up those therapeutic hours in order 
to matriculate, but this also feels in hand for most of 
us, or possible at least. 
No, that’s not it…

3. The numbers we seem anxious about and which 
we can’t seem to add up 
are the ones that speak of supply and demand in the counselling marketplace. 
As we cast our minds forward to next summer and graduation, there feels 
to be a common mindfulness of the anomaly that awaits us.

Despite the declaration 
of intent in IAPT, the NHS itself on its own website asserts, ‘In some areas, the choice of counsellors may 
be limited and there may be long waiting lists.’ The client demand, generated through GP consultations, is high and growing. Yet as prospective suppliers of the very service that is in such high demand, our new colleagues in the 
first year of the diploma 
are going through the same difficulties we all faced this time last year and are struggling to find placements. In the language of the barrow boy – we can’t give it away! And we are one year of one course. There were 20 graduates last year and there will be another 20 after us. 
Is there paid work out in 
the real world for all of us? 
It looks unlikely.

The same NHS site does suggest that to avoid the 
long queue, a patient may 
opt to pay for private counselling – and that, 
of course, is what we are 
also having to consider as 
an income source, setting 
up as counsellors in private practice. And for me and 
for a few others, it is here where the real worry and doubt is lurking – regarding the number one.
Becoming a counsellor operating a private practice looks a solitary business 
and we are voicing some apprehension about that. 
On the surface this seems 
a ludicrous ‘revelation’. 
I can hear the voices of friends asking, ‘What did 
you think it would be like?’ And I do confess to feelings 
of bashful idiocy. In my defence however, it is the counselling course I am 
on and what I have enjoyed 
about it that has led to my Damascus moment.

The pattern for most 
of us, as part-time students, has been to work in other 
jobs three or four days per week, to counsel on placement for the equivalent of one day per week, and 
to attend the course one 
day per week. Even the counselling experience 
in this mix has felt shared – 
for the counselling that 
we have done, we have 
had group supervision virtually on demand, and 
in practising skills on the course, we have been open and generous of spirit, for our mutual benefit. It feels to me as if we have become 
a counselling gang, and that, I realise, is one of the chief joys of the course – feeling part of a group, striving 
for a common goal. So when 
I imagine the reward for reaching that goal as working without immediate colleagues, it gives me pause for thought.

There are alternatives 
that I know I can avail 
myself of. Though it is 
not integral to our syllabus, 
I can look into group therapy as well as one-to-one work, 
or I could investigate the pathways that might lead 
to work as a teacher on 
a counselling course. 
I have teaching experience, 
it would involve being part 
of the gang, and, in terms 
of the marketplace, if we come back to supply and demand, these figures look encouraging. I know my research methodology is questionable, and my sample is not controlled, but look 
at the ratios in the back of 
this very publication: two 
to four pages of recruitment to 25+ pages of training. 
Those numbers speak 
for themselves.

Some details have been changed to protect identities.