391 – Choosing Your Clinical Will Executor

Online and Telephone Placements – Is It Something I Did?

In Episode 391 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 choosing your clinical will executor – who is suitable for the role and where a clinical will can fail.

Then in ‘Practice Matters‘, Rory speaks with Dee Phillips-Duncan about online and telephone placement requirements – and whether they reflect what the public and students actually need.

And finally, in ‘Student Services‘, Rory and Ken discuss the self-doubt that surfaces when a client does not return – the familiar question of ‘is it something I did?’

Choosing Your Clinical Will Executor [starts at 03:48 mins]

In this section, Rory and Ken explore choosing your clinical will executor – who is suitable for the role – and the common points where a clinical will can fail.

Key points discussed include:

• A clinical will lets a trusted therapist, rather than a grieving family member, compassionately contact clients if the practitioner becomes seriously unwell or dies.
• The executor should be an experienced counsellor or psychotherapist who understands the practitioner’s confidentiality agreement and can hold client distress, not a student or novice.
• Options include an experienced colleague, a clinical supervisor, a professional outside the practice, or a practice organisation, each carrying its own strengths and weaknesses around impartiality, capacity and access to information.
• A clinical will is an ethical document rather than a legal one, so it needs no set template and should be tailored to the practitioner’s own clients, modality and boundaries.
• Common failure points include storing client data on personal devices that fail or are replaced, changed passwords, outdated software, and the executor never being told the will needs activating.
• The role involves real work and should be discussed, agreed and reasonably paid for in advance, with the will revisited annually to check everything is still current.

Online and Telephone Placements [starts at 36:12 mins]

In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Dee Phillips-Duncan about whether current placement requirements reflect what clients and students actually need.

Key points from this conversation include:

• Personal Bridge is a non-profit counselling charity in Bradford offering pay-what-you-can-afford counselling, with face-to-face work locally and remote counselling across the UK.
• Current requirements let adult placement students complete up to 49% of their 100 hours online or by telephone, with the remaining hours face-to-face, while work with children and young people must be face-to-face.
• Dee’s informal survey of Facebook groups found students struggling emotionally, financially and practically, with some holding hundreds of supervised hours yet unable to qualify because of the face-to-face split.
• She highlights an accessibility concern, including a visually impaired student unable to drive who spent two years trying to find a reachable placement, raising questions under the Equality Act.
• Her service saw 26 of 30 enquiries over eight weeks request online counselling, reflecting a growing public preference for remote therapy as other services such as GP appointments also move online.
• Dee calls on professional bodies to review whether current rules unintentionally create barriers, stressing this is about accessibility and shared responsibility, not lowering standards.

Is It Something I Did? Managing Self-Doubt When a Client Does Not Return [starts at 55:52 mins]

In this section, Rory and Ken discuss the self-doubt that arises when a placement client does not attend or does not return after a first session.

Key points include:

• The worry of ‘is it me?’ is common for students and persists for many therapists throughout their careers, and is closely linked to imposter syndrome.
• Supervision is the ideal place to take these feelings, and the client who did not return is exactly the one worth bringing rather than quietly dropping.
• Therapy is the client’s journey, and respecting client autonomy means accepting their right not to return, for reasons that are theirs and often nothing to do with the therapist.
• Clients may simply not be a fit, may have found therapy different from what they expected, or may have taken what they needed from a single session and moved on.
• Honest, reflective self-examination has value, but it should not tip into self-criticism that becomes self-destructive or makes someone want to give up.
• Practitioners should learn their agency’s processes around a did-not-attend, including who is responsible for following up and how many contact attempts are made before a client is classed as not returning.

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