384 – Closing Your Counselling Practice

Finding Paid Work After Qualifying – Choosing the Right Counselling Study Books

In Episode 384 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly take us through this week’s three topics:

Firstly, in ‘Ethical, Sustainable Practice‘, they explore winding down or closing your counselling practice – what practitioners need to plan for both expected and unexpected endings.

Then in ‘Practice Matters‘, Rory speaks with Wayne Williams about finding paid work after qualifying – how he secured counselling work within months of completing his training.

And finally in ‘Student Services‘, Rory and Ken discuss choosing the right counselling study books – how to build a reading list without spending a fortune.

Closing Your Counselling Practice [starts at 02:32 mins]

In this section, Rory and Ken explore closing your counselling practice — how to wind down responsibly, drawing on Rory’s own experience and the collaborative thread running through the new BACP Ethical Framework.

Key points discussed include:

• Every counsellor who goes into practice will one day go out of practice, yet there is very little guidance available on how to close a practice ethically and safely.
• The new BACP Ethical Framework, coming into force on the 3rd of November 2026, emphasises collaboration with the client, and Section 4.5 requires reasonable advance notice, planned breaks and endings, and careful management of unplanned endings.
• Closing a practice should begin by stopping new enquiries first – taking down or updating your website, directory listings and professional profiles – before turning attention to your existing client load.
• Rory gave his clients around six months’ notice and his supervisees about a year, discussed his plans with his supervisor beforehand, and framed his message neutrally to avoid causing anxiety for clients who may use a website or profile as a transitional object.
• Practical housekeeping matters include record keeping and data retention, ongoing storage costs, speaking to your insurer about cover for past clients, checking your professional body’s non-practising or retired membership options, and contacting the ICO about your data protection fee.
• Defensible decision-making means doing the critical thinking, writing down what you decided and why, and keeping documentation so that your reasoning can be evidenced if it is ever questioned.

Finding Paid Work After Qualifying [starts at 32:12 mins]

In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Wayne Williams about how he found counselling work almost immediately after qualifying and what newly qualified therapists can learn from his journey.

Key points from this conversation include:

• Wayne qualified in June 2025 and secured client hours quickly, having built connections through a CPD course on working with neurodivergent children and young people that led directly to offers of work.
• Private practice is effectively self-employment, which brings responsibilities around tax, National Insurance and expenses, and Wayne recommends getting support from an accountant so you can focus on your clients.
• Identifying a niche and drawing on your own past skills and experience gives you a strong base to build a practice from, rather than leaving previous work behind when you qualify.
• Wayne runs a portfolio career, combining counselling with sports coaching, personal training and continued study, and plans ahead for seasonal dips such as the summer holidays when his younger clients are away.
• Counselling work rarely appears on job websites and tends to come through word of mouth, so staying in touch with peers and former course groups can be a valuable source of opportunities.
• His advice to newly qualified counsellors is to be patient, trust the process, stay curious, keep learning, and hold on to the reason they came into counselling in the first place.

Choosing the Right Counselling Study Books [starts at 52:58 mins]

In this section, Rory and Ken discuss how students can choose the right counselling books for their studies without overspending.

Key points include:

• Before buying anything, students should check what is available in their college or university library and get the recommended reading list from their tutor, who can advise which books are essential and which can simply be dipped into.
• Using a tutor’s preferred texts can make marking easier and gives students a reliable steer on which books offer the best value.
• Older original texts from the 1940s and 1950s can be dense and hard to read, as they were often written as academic defences of a theory, so contemporary academic texts that are still citable are usually more accessible.
• Counselling Tutor’s website offers free, plain-English interpretations of complex theory along with the original references, which help students understand a theory before engaging with the original literature.
• Understanding and applying theory matters more than parroting facts, and application to practice is what assignments look for – something AI tools cannot provide because they lack lived experience.
• Second-hand books can be a bargain, but ethics and law texts should be bought new or borrowed current, as frameworks and legislation such as the BACP Ethical Framework and UK GDPR change.

Links and Resources

Counselling Skills Academy

Advanced Certificate in Counselling Supervision

Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide

Counsellor CPD

Counselling Study Resource

Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide

Counselling Tutor Training and CPD

Facebook group

Website

Online and Telephone Counselling: A Practitioner’s Guide

Online and Telephone Counselling Course