The Unpaid Profession: Counselling

Hi, welcome to the unpaid profession, a podcast about the counselling profession and the prevalence of unpaid work, so-called volunteering and insecure jobs. I am your host Roxy Birdsall. A little about me: I am a qualified counsellor who currently works with children. I am also a doctorate student at the university of Chester and I am someone who has been, and continues to be affected by the state of employment within the counselling profession. When I undertook my counselling training, employment was something spoken about very little. Perhaps naively, it was only as I neared qualification that I began to realise the sheer lack of employment in my local area and the huge amount of counsellors competing for that employment. Whilst I was lucky in quickly gaining employment, I watched my partner who is also a counsellor struggle for a year and a half to find a job despite having many volunteer hours and an MSc in Counselling. This is when I saw first hand the emotional and economic effects of the lack of employment in the Counselling profession. This issue has only been amplified as we’ve struggled materially to build our lives together whilst dealing with the weight of feeling undervalued and underappreciated as employed counsellors. When I began my doctoral studies, I started wondering if through research I could begin to action some change. I found that other therapists and organisations are and have been for a while now discussing and opposing this very issue, the issue of unpaid work, of endless volunteer and placement hours to gain eventual employment and accreditation and exploitative, insecure, low paying conditions when employed. So as you can probably tell my interest in counselling and issues of employment is both academic and personal. I have created this podcast to platform discussion about employment in the counselling profession, to raise awareness and hopefully contribute to positive change for the profession. As we speak to individuals involved in activism, I hope to present you with both personal and academic views of unpaid work in the counselling profession. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for more episodes of the Unpaid Profession coming soon. Please tweet me your thoughts and comments at @RoxyBirdsall. I look forward to hearing from you.