
The advanced certificate in Online and Telephone Counselling is a professional qualification and only open to qualified counsellors and psychotherapists who are supervised and hold membership with and work to a recognised ethical framework.
YES – UPGRADE MY TRAINING FOR JUST £69.99 NO THANK YOUPassing the Advanced Certificate entitles graduates to apply for Professional membership status with the Association of Counselling and Therapy Online (ACTO)
ACTO Level 2 Professional Member Status includes:
- Practitioner admittance to the ACTO Professional Register
- Public visibility by having an entry in the ACTO “Find a Therapist” directory, hosted on the ACTO website (if required).


Do the training and the assessment in your own time.
You can do both the training and the assessment AT YOUR OWN PACE and at a time that suits you.
You will be supported via LIVE TUTOR-LED SESSIONS (held online) where you can ask questions directly and get support with your learning and portfolio.
Assessment Process
The Process
- Each student will be guided in building and submitting a final portfolio that will be marked by one of our appointed assessors
- Our head assessor will cross-mark and internally verify to check for overall quality
- Your portfolio may then be sent to ACTO assessors, who perform the final external verification quality check.
This assessment is a pass/referred process.
If work is referred for a first time, the student will receive comments and feedback and MAY RE-SUBMIT the referred work AT NO ADDITIONAL COST.
If a student is referred twice or more, then a small re-submission fee of £25 will apply to each additional portfolio submission.
The Details
Each candidate will be supported in submitting a final portfolio of maximum of 3,000 words to evidence their learning.
The assignment is made up of eight sections that cover the theory and ethics of working online. Questions have word counts ranging from 50 words to 250 words, and the total assignment is 1,350 words.
Each candidate will work with a peer and hold three skills sessions that will be recorded and peer-evaluated. The areas being evaluated are briefed in the assignment but include contracting, using skills, building rapport, and working with online endings.
Each candidate will complete a 900-word case study mapped to criteria taken from the recorded skills sessions.
Each candidate will submit a 300-word reflective statement of the learning journey.
In Summary
Q & A
Question – When are the tutor-led sessions held?
Answer – Every Wednesday from 19h00 to 20h00, a tutor will be available online.
Question – How often does the Advanced Certificate run?
Answer – You can join the Advanced Certificate anytime.
Question – How long will this training and assessment take/how long do I need to set aside?
Answer – This depends on the individual student, however, the time estimated is 100 hours for both the training and preparation of the final portfolio.
You can take as long as you like to do the training and assessment.

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