New postgraduate courses to give counselling profession what it deserves

A two-year postgraduate Diploma in Counselling was recently approved by the Department of Psychology, and there is also the possibility of following this up with a new Master's degree in Counselling in the near future.

"This is a very important development because counselling entails a lot of training," Dione Mifsud, president of the Malta Association for the Counselling Profession (MACP), told The Sunday Times last week.

The proposed diploma, which still needs to be approved by the Faculty of Education and the University Senate, will not only be open to teachers but also to those holding first degrees in the humanities. This is also a big achievement for the association, which has been set up for five years, during which it has worked very hard to establish counselling as a profession.

A three-hour evening course, held twice a week, the postgraduate diploma will run on a part-time basis and will include a practicum - 200 hours of hands-on practice, 150 hours of supervision and 50 hours of personal therapy.

"This diploma is the qualification that makes you a counsellor," Mr Mifsud said. "The Master's will make you a specialist in one of various fields of counselling, such as counselling supervision or counsellor training, or in more specific fields, like school, community or health counselling."

A counsellor and psychotherapist by profession, Mr Mifsud has been association president for almost two years. He is also the co-ordinator of the University Counselling Unit, and lectures in counselling and various skills.

"The association was set up initially because we believed we needed a forum to put across our views, see what was going on, and legalise the profession," Mr Mifsud explained.

In fact, the MACP is currently working on a draft law, which it hopes to submit to parliament. However, it is still on tenterhooks as to whether now is the time to push it, because of next year's election.

But the association believes it also needs to have a contextualised code of ethics and standards. In fact, "we are amending our code of ethics by writing it in both Maltese and English, so it will truly reflect our context".

The association was also set up with the intention of being a pressure group for training in counselling in Malta, "because up to now, only training in school counselling has been offered by the University; thus you could only become a school counsellor".

There are currently only about seven or eight counsellors who hold a Master's degree in Counselling in Malta, and these have studied abroad. Right now, "everyone can call himself a counsellor, set up shop and receive clients, simply because there is no law governing counselling".

"While we are very happy to work with the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) model, we are worried about certain training courses which are being offered privately. We know about a few organisations that offer what they call 'a diploma in counselling', with no practicum, no supervision, and no therapy involved, after which participants are told they 'can practise as counsellors'," Mr Mifsud said.

"This is extremely dangerous because counselling is not something you learn through books, but also something you need to practise. It can easily be compared to becoming a medical doctor. You cannot become a doctor just by writing assignments. You need to practise."

Counselling is a small profession in Malta. The association has around 48 members, most of whom are holders of the Diploma in School Counselling, "the reason being that, since school counselling was the main route in the past, most counsellors end up in schools".

Many of these school counsellors eventually became school administrators or assistant heads, so "there is also an element of natural wastage."

Counselling courses at the University started in the mid-Eighties. The course, originally known as the Diploma in Guidance and Counselling, later became the Diploma in School Counselling. There are about 80 to 90 qualified counsellors in Malta, "but not all practise".

Counselling is an old profession, hailing from when oracles used to sit and give counsel to persons who needed it, so there has been a tradition of going to a counsellor for enlightenment. "Counselling is nothing like that nowadays," Mr Mifsud said.

"Today, you go to a counsellor to work on issues that limit you as a person, such as lack of self-esteem, unfinished business or even past traumas. The counsellor acts as a projective screen which the client hits, and is ready to answer to the client's needs. Counselling is an opportunity to make life better when life does not make sense. We do not give advice. We work on what is presented to us and present alternatives."

Counselling is a sort of reconstructing therapy - deconstructing the old self and reconstructing the new. Psychology and counselling are kindred disciplines which refer to each other.

Whereas there are many fields in psychology - organisational, educational, counselling and clinical, counselling on the other hand draws a great deal from sociological, anthropological and ethnographic fields.

"Normally counselling takes place more in the field. You would find school counselling services within a school, health counsellors within a hospital, community counsellors within local communities or youth centres. With the new courses, we intend to cater for the need for counsellors in different contexts."

The association is also greatly involved in making counselling a profession by holding a training week every October, bringing famous international trainers to Malta, such as Professor Tim Bond, world famous for his contribution on ethics in counselling, and Kim Etherington, a seasoned author on issues like trauma and bereavement.

This year the MACP is inviting Gabrielle Syme, who will speak on 'Dual Relationships within the Helping Professions', an extremely topical subject in Malta. Next year will be a special year for the MACP because the UN-approved International Association for Counselling (IAC) will hold its world conference in Malta, in the first week in July, with the theme 'Counselling for Peace'.

With a counselling law in place, a code of ethics and a register of approved counsellors, the association cannot be happier.

"As a client, you need to feel assured that your counsellor is qualified and is really up to scratch for the best possible service. Our next step would then be to start counselling research in Malta, which is still quite rare. We need to know more what effects counselling has on clients and how successful it is in general."

Mr Mifsud, who is also working on his own Ph.D. research project, tackling ethics around Maltese counselling, has interestingly found out that imported codes of ethics very often give a lot of variation to Maltese counselling.

His research involves understanding how issues like confidentiality, dual relationships and multiple roles are perceived by practising counsellors, bearing in mind the limited space we live in, as well as the processes counsellors go through when they are faced with ethical or moral dilemmas.

"In turn, you get a lot of people behaving and reacting in different ways," he said.

This is why research is crucial.