By Cian Molloy - 25 March, 2019
ACCORD, the Catholic Marriage Care Service, is urging counsellors to enrol in its Certificate in Counselling.
The specialist marriage and relationships course is open to qualified, experienced counsellors who already have substantial knowledge and experience of the person-centred approach, and who already have a supervised case load.
Applicants must have degree- or diploma-level qualifications from an approved counselling training programme and have completed at least 100 hours of supervised client working during training and at least 50 hours of personal therapy.
Successful applicants will have their course fees and supervision fees funded by their local ACCORD centre or region, but they are required to contract with ACCORD to repay the cost of training by delivering 100 counselling sessions during their ten-month training period and to provide an agreed number of annual voluntary sessions for a minimum of three years after qualification.
The Certificate in Counselling (Marriage and Relationship) course is worth 20 ECTS credits at NFQ Level 8, the level for honours bachelor degrees and higher diplomas.
The course, which runs from October 2019 to June 2020 inclusive, is run in conjunction with the Pontifical University in Maynooth.
Participation will involve attending weekend lectures/workshops once a month and being available to work with ACCORD clients, ideally sometimes during the day and sometimes in the evening. Attendance at supervision and ACCORD centre meetings is also a requirement.
Further information and application forms are available on the ACCORD website. The closing date for applications is Friday, 31st May.
Marriage counsellors are in demand more than ever, said ACCORD executive administrator Harry Casey. “Marriage and families are today experiencing new and more complex challenges than ever before. Yet we know that good marriages and healthy families are not only the bedrock of our society, but also provide their constituent members with a stable lifelong environment in which they can experience: love, support, understanding, tolerance, caring and nurturing, commitment, respect, interdependence, enjoyment and much happiness.”
At present, ACCORD, which was founded in 1962, operates 55 counselling centres on the island of Ireland and has more than 800 trained members, providing clients with a professional and ethical educational and counselling service in a safe and confidential environment.
