Competence and Self-Care in Counselling and Psychotherapy

What is it that makes a counsellor or psychotherapist competent?

In Competence and Self-Care in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Gerrie Hughes offers a framework for understanding what being competent means for individual practitioners, both generally and in moment-by-moment work with clients. Divided into two sections, Part One, The Competent Self, and Part Two, Care of the Self, the book explores care and replenishment of the self as an essential requirement for maintaining competence.

The Competence Framework presented here suggests that the three elements of Practitioner, Client and Context are essential factors for making good therapeutic choices, as well as offering a structure for reflection, either individually or in supervision. The eight principles that elaborate on these elements provide a route to explore competence that is relevant for any theoretical orientation and appropriate for practitioners at any stage. The reader is encouraged to make their own