Some students might already know that they want to work with children and young people.

In this section, Rory and Ken discuss the differences between counselling young people and adults, and why practicing with younger clients requires specialist training:

• Many meta-models of therapy were developed for adults.
• Every adult was once a child – by working with adults first, you can gain a greater understanding of the impact and importance of childhood on adulthood.
• Children have less autonomy – you're working within a frame of reference that is much more limited.
• Working with children requires specialist training.
• One of the key differences between counselling children/young people and adults is the fact that children's cognitive, emotional, and social development stages differ significantly from adults.
• Can the child comprehend therapy fully? Do they know what it is? Can the young person fully understand their choices?
• Confidentiality – does the child understand you may need to break confidentiality? Having their trust broken at an early age can impact their adulthood.
• Make sure you understand your organisation’s confidentiality policy.
• Seeing what skills work best e.g. silence might be less effective when counselling young people.
• Building up trust is incredibly important – it might need to be built up differently.
• Rewind your phenomenology – look at things from a child’s frame of reference.