Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) is supporting students training to be counsellors with additional funding.

BGU has a long history of supporting access and participation in Higher Education and working to remove barriers faced by members of the community in pursuing their educational and career ambitions.

As part of this commitment, the university has recognised that the additional costs associated with training as a counsellor can be a barrier for many students who wish to enter the profession. These additional requirements include gaining experience of working with clients and supervision, both of which create extra costs. This issue is common across the sector and may make these programmes unaffordable for some potential students.

In an effort to tackle this issue, the university is supporting students on the BA (Hons) Counselling programme by paying for any additional cost associated with supervision hours. The package also provides support for students' emotional wellbeing during the challenges of counsellor training, by covering the cost of up to 40 hours of personal therapy to be undertaken during the course.

This equates to an investment by the university in every student on the programme of approximately £3000 during the course of the degree and reinforces BGU’s commitment to widening access and participation.

Dr Sue Becker, Psychology & Counselling Programme Lead said: "Providing support for the costs of supervision and personal counselling is our way of acknowledging the emotional challenges of counsellor training and give our students the best chance of succeeding in their dreams of working as counsellors. For many of our students, this ambition is long held - a way of giving back to their community - or has been inspired by seeing the benefits of counselling in helping those around them.

"I grew up in a small mining community and was the first person in my family to go to university, so I'm committed to finding ways to make university more accessible to anyone who is passionate about the field of counselling."

The BA (Hons) Counselling programme at BGU is designed to enable students to pursue a career in counselling and gain the requirements to apply to register with the BACP upon successful completion.

Dr Becker said: "Wherever we look there are stories relating to growing rates of distress and anxiety across all areas of our society and the need for more counsellors has never been greater. These are challenging times for all of us and helping with the additional costs that come with counsellor training is one way we can help remove barriers and make the profession more inclusive."