COUNSELLING, COACHING & MENTORING at Canterbury Christ Church University

Our BA in Counselling, Coaching & Mentoring will allow you to gain a deep understanding of the helping professions. You will focus on the theory, approaches and skills used in counselling, coaching and mentoring.

You will be taught by passionate and experienced tutors supported by a wide range of guest speakers from social care, health and education.

The ‘helping professions’ have experienced significant growth in the past decade. You may enter one of a range of career routes that are both challenging and rewarding.

You will explore areas including:

• counselling
• coaching
• mentoring
• ethics and values

Why counselling, coaching and mentoring?

If you are interested in the ‘helping professions’ as a possible career route, this is the course for you. This degree provides an introduction to the disciplines of counselling, coaching and mentoring, and will examine the purpose and function of each area.

You will develop your knowledge and skills in relation to a broad range of helping approaches and techniques along with the skills to build effective relationships with clients. These can be used within many different settings including schools, voluntary sector, social care and health.

Upon completing your degree, you may continue your professional development through a range of post-graduate studies and, where relevant, accredited training in related fields such as psychotherapy, careers, social work, human resources and other talking and creative therapies. Similarly, if you want to continue in a professional career in counselling and qualify as an accredited counsellor with BACP or other regulating body, you will need to undertake the relevant accredited training (see the BACP website for further details). 

What will i study?

You will build your knowledge, understanding and skills of counselling, coaching and mentoring, and other therapeutic practices. You will develop your curiosity, critical reasoning, independent study and research skills so you can explore this fascinating subject and a wide range of related professions and work environments.

The varied curriculum will enable you to integrate theory and skills into practice and to start to build the professional attributes and competences needed to work with others, often in challenging and difficult circumstances.

By the end of the course you will have a firm grasp of key concepts and theories underpinning the disciplines of counselling, coaching and mentoring.  You will be able to demonstrate a sophisticated critical understanding of a range of professional practice issues and developments within the broad remit of the ‘helping professions’ and be able to apply a critical understanding of reflective and reflexive practice.

You will understand the importance of and demonstrate effective foundation and advanced mentoring, coaching and counselling skills for building and maintaining relationships with clients in the one to one and group context. In addition, you will be able to show that you can examine, analyse and evaluate critically a range of interpersonal and therapeutically informed strategies and interventions to support others.

What can i do next?

Throughout your studies you will be encouraged to consider a range of future career pathways and the next steps needed to achieve this. On successful completion of your degree, you will have developed the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to enter a comprehensive range of roles within the helping professions, including employment options within health, education, human resources and management, social services and third sector organisations.