Talking Helps Counselling

Talking-Helps Foundation

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What is Talking-Helps Counselling?

Talking-Helps Counselling is a brief, goal-directed school counselling, based on solution-focused psychology. The counsellor specialises in solution-focused conversation skills, acknowledging problems and focusing on the student’s desired changes. Together with the student, the counsellor will make a plan to overcome difficulties, reconnect to resources, set goals for the future and subsequently find significant moves towards these goals.

The student can bring a friend or family member with him to the counselling sessions or can come alone. In the first session, the circle technique plays a central role, visualising the student’s strengths, resources, and goals. At the end of the first session, the student is invited to use a talking-helps form to write down the discussed small, achievable steps towards goals as well as how friends, family, and the school can support him or her. This form the student can take home.

During follow-up sessions, the student and counsellor discuss the achieved progress, who and what has helped to achieve it and identify the next significant moves towards the student’s goals. Usually, the brief counselling is sufficient for the student to get ahead in a good way.

Want to become a Talking-Helps Counsellor?

The Talking-Helps Foundation offers training courses to become a certified Talking-Helps Counsellor. If you are a mental health professional (psychologist, school counsellor, psychiatrist, social worker), an educational professional (teacher, lecturer, tutor) or a student in of these fields, subscribe to one of our training courses.

The course involves 24 hours of active training by an experienced trainer and a practical, online exam. At the end of the training you will have mastered: listening and grounding skills, solution-focused conversation skills, resource activating questions, expert application of the circle technique, self-harm and suicide prevention techniques, relationship questions, direct and indirect compliments, setting of well-formed goals, giving end-of-session feedback, cooperate with problem-oriented colleagues, and the ethics and liability of the Talking-Helps counsellor.

If you complete the training, you will be registered as a certified talking-help counsellor to be called in by affiliated schools.