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Student UpdateOct 2018 No. 39

Welcome to the October issue of "Student Update" and best wishes at the start of another academic year. Are you looking forward to the change of season? Or are you dreading the colder weather? Here at CPCAB we have a range of opinions but, based in green countryside as we are, we are blessed with the glorious autumn colours and the abundance of the harvest season all around us.

We are also enjoying "the start of term" feeling (who remembers covering their school books?) and looking forward to the challenges ahead. Here's hoping for a good year - best wishes as always from all of us.

Counselling Skills & Studies 2nd edition: a new edition from CPCAB published by SAGE (see new discount code)

Exclusive 25% discount for CPCAB students and tutors – UKCPCAB25 at checkout on SAGE's website.

Packed full of inspirational activities and written in a supportive conversational style, Counselling Skills & Studies is a book for anyone wanting to learn counselling skills or embarking on their first stage of training to become a counsellor. The new edition now includes a more detailed discussion of key theories, has a new chapter on self-care, and is fully up to date with the occupational and professional standards and ethical frameworks.

Split into 3 parts, it covers:

Part 1: Counselling Skills will introduce readers to the underpinning knowledge and practical tools needed to develop a range of helping skills for use in a variety of helping roles, showing what it means to work safely and ethically.

Part 2: Counselling Studies will help them take their understanding further by considering in detail important theories and professional issues, preparing them to work as a professional counsellor.

Part 3: Counselling Study Skills will offer practical advice and hints and tips to help them make the best start on their counselling portfolio, including journal and essay writing skills, research skills and how to get inspired and overcome blocks to learning.

Written by CPCAB authors Fiona Ballantine Dykes, Barry Kopp and Traci Postings, with an introduction by Anthony Crouch, it provides you with an ideal "way in", showing you what counselling is all about.

Praise for the second edition:

'I found "Counselling Skills and Studies" a superb introduction into the world of Counselling. Approaching the subject with a view to a second career the book felt pitched perfectly. A clear and concise style pervaded throughout and the format of the book lends itself to good structured learning. Never teacherly, the writing spoke to me and the use of conversational examples was effective. The simplification and analysis of the 3 modalities (Psychodynamic / Person Centered / CBT) was invaluable for me as I grasp these new terms and the final section looking at Study Skills will be an essential reference for me as I progress through my studies'Student Reviewer

You may also be interested to know that the discount code (above) can also be used when purchasing any SAGE counselling and psychotherapy books.

Accessibility of CPCAB qualifications

At CPCAB we take our responsibilities in respect of the accessibility of our qualifications very seriously. At a recent meeting of our Equal Opportunities team, one of the themes we explored was that of the use of computer software to assist readers with visual impairments. This followed an approach from a centre with a learner who found that their software couldn’t cope with many of our documents; our thanks go to the learner and their centre for sharing these concerns with us.

This software seems to struggle particularly with text that is printed in boxes, such as in our external assessment papers. An immediate solution was to remove the boxes from the large-font papers that we already offer to learners with visual difficulties; the change has been brought in from the beginning of this academic year and we hope it will be helpful. Do remember that centre staff need to request any large-font papers no later than 8 weeks before the assessment.

Rolling out any changes to our wider range of documents will be a much bigger task, of course, and we would like to ask for your feedback here before we start and any useful suggestions that we might consider to make CPCAB’s documentation more accessible, in as much or as little detail as you think best. We can't guarantee to adopt every suggestion made but will be very grateful to read them; the information you provide will be treated in confidence. Please send your responses to gill@cpcab.co.uk before the end of 2018 and we’ll review them at the next meeting of our Equal Opportunities team. Many thanks.

New Vision for Mental Health

The New Vision for Mental Health website asks: "Have you ever wondered what mental healthcare would look like if, knowing what we know today, it was redesigned from scratch?"

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