Counselling: The Rewarding Career that has Plenty to Offer
Candlefox
Do you love helping and inspiring others? With an excellent range of opportunities that will benefit new job prospects, Counselling may be the perfect job for you.
Counsellors provide information on vocational, relationship, social and education difficulties and issues, and work with people to help them to identify and define their emotional issues through therapies.
Check out this article on how to become an online counsellor.
How can counselling be a rewarding and fulfilling job?
Counsellors use a range of communication skills such as listening skills by paying close attention to what the client communicates across to the counsellor, attending to their needs such as maintaining eye-contact with the client to show an in-depth understanding of their concerns and issues. They also provide a natural approach to solving and assisting them in overcoming their difficulties and conflict resolution skills.
Counsellors work in a range of different healthcare environments include:
- Hospitals (acute admissions, psychiatric intensive care and rehabilitation)
- Improving Access to Psychological Therapy Services
- Community Mental Health Teams and Child Adolescent Mental Health Services
- Health Centres
They may also work in private hospitals, private practice, forensic settings, industry and education as well as research and corporate institutions.
Becoming a counsellor
Counselling is a popular career choice as it is such a rewarding career.
According to the Department of Employment’s Job Outlook website, there are currently
23,500
Counsellors in Australia,
with very strong future career growth
The weekly pay, according to Job Outlook is
$1,330
per week
People of all ages seek guidance from counsellors from children to adults; and all seek the basic need for assistance in overcoming life’s obstacles. As a counsellor, your care for them may be short term or long term, depending on their situation.
There are a range of other careers you can undertake in counselling as well such as life coaching.
Depending on the role, it’s possible to gain entry into a job as a counsellor with a certificate qualification. However, people typically become counsellors after earning either a bachelor’s degree in social sciences or counselling or a postgraduate qualification to become a health professional.
There are also courses that can help you become a counsellor with a diploma-level qualification and these include the Diploma of Counselling. The CHC51712 Diploma of Counselling provides the skills and knowledge required to become successful in the community services industry. It is a great time to become a counsellor in Australia. Employment for counsellors has grown strongly over the last 5 years. This is expected to continue until 2017 and beyond. The most common qualification and entry level for a career as a Counsellor is a Certificate III.
On completion of this online Diploma of Counselling, employment opportunities can include:
- Counsellor
- Family Support
- Community Organisations
- Residential Services
- Government Support Services
A great way to advance your skills or gain an understanding of counselling is through the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), which is the largest counselling registration body in the country. Through this organisation, you may be able to find a course that meets ACA Accredited Training Standards and the courses may be from Diploma level Certificate to a Bachelor Degree.
What are the job statistics for counselling in Australia?
- The average age of a Counsellor is 48 years
- Counsellors work an average length of 36.3% hours a week
- 54% of Counsellors work full-time
- 77.1% of Counsellors are female
According to PayScale, a mental health counsellor can earn from
$27,000 – $70,000
The growth of employment by 2022 is said to go up to 29,300, with 22,000 job openings over this time from workers who are leaving this particular field. This growth in employment is a reason why this career path is a great area to get into. It offers a very different level of social assistance to many other, or similar, jobs and the issues that a counsellor often deals with ranges from alcohol counselling by working on advancing human behaviour in clients, relationship counselling and a job as a social worker. All these jobs offer very high levels of people-skills and the ability of a counsellor to help offer their assistance and guidance shows exactly why it’s such a rewarding job.
The different mental health problems that counsellors are most likely to encounter, include:
- obsessive-compulsive disorder,
- bipolar disorder,
- anorexia,
- paranoid personality disorder,
- anxiety and
- phobias and irrational fears.
Australia presents numerous pathways to counselling degrees, beginning with TAFE certificates and diplomas and finishing with postgraduate studies.
Courses include:
- Bachelor of Human Services (Counselling)
- Graduate Diploma in Community Counselling
- Counselling & Psychology Advanced Certificate
- Graduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy
- Postgraduate Diploma of Social Health and Counselling
- Master in Counselling
- Life Coaching Certificate
- Master of Social Science (Professional Counselling)
- Doctor of Counselling
A fulfilling and rewarding aspect of counselling – working with people with disabilities
People with disability (PwD) are valuable members of our community and require a certain level of care from counsellors. There are now 140,400 workers in the aged and disabled carers sector, according to Job Outlook, and the job roles are in health care and social assistance. The most common certificate level for this area is a Certificate II.
This growing industry is a very rewarding and fulfilling job to get into, so browse courses listed above and start your new job prospect today.
If you love and have a true passion with helping people then find the perfect course that’s right for you to gain entry into this unique and rewarding industry and start building your skills today.
