Study Child and Youth Counselling Online | Online Course
- Self-paced course | Start anytime | 1:1 tutor support.
- 6 modules | 3 core modules look at counselling techniques and counselling children | 3 elective modules - you choose | Options include grief counselling, family counselling, life coaching etc.
- Feedback from expert and experienced tutors | Written assignments | Practical exercises | Research etc.
- Improve your job and career prospects in this rewarding field working with, and supporting, children and adolescents.
Modules
Note that each module in the Qualification - Certificate in Child and Youth Counselling is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.
Why do children need meaningful relationships?
Normally a child's first, most important, and enduring relationships will be in their family. At times peer relationships can become more significant; but often it is the family relationships that endure. This is not always the case though.
Family interactions are a central part of the young child’s world. Emotions and conflict as well as play and humour, are at the core of the way in which the child learns (Dunn). Hinde argued that all relationships need to be seen in their social and cultural contexts.
Depending on the family environment, they may experience positive relationships with their parent/s, siblings and extended family.
Children who share close, meaningful, quality relationships with their family learn which behaviours are morally and ethically appropriate, and which are unacceptable within a given society.
Additionally they learn which behaviours produce positive and negative effects within their immediate family, school and peer environments.
In a family unit, children learn which emotions and feelings are suitable within a situation and they are able to use these emotions and feelings within a home environment or school setting to cope with everyday conflicts and problems. Children build on existing or potential relationships based on an ability to interact effectively with different people and increasing knowledge of effective relationships with others.
At five or six, children also go off to kindergarten or school, starting their educational journey, which lasts for many years. As the journey begins it seems like such an intense beginning, but soon the child will be learning and evolving into a differently educated individual.
More sophisticated thinking: Piaget’s perspective
By the age of four children are developing a more complete understanding of concepts and tend to change and evolve. However their thought is dominated more by perception than logic. This is clearly illustrated by conservation experiments. In such an experiment a pre-operational child may be shown two balls of clay that the child acknowledges are equal in size, one of which is then squashed. The child is now asked if both lots of clay are equal. A child at this stage will say they are no longer equal.
Although the child is still unable to think in a truly logical fashion, they may begin to treat objects as part of a group. The pre-operational child may have difficulty with classification. This is because, to a pre-operational child, the division of a parent class into subclasses destroys the original group.
For example, a child has a pile of toy vehicles - which are then split into trucks and cars. Next the child is asked 'Tell me, are their more trucks than vehicles, or less, or the same number?' the child will almost always say there are more trucks than vehicles!
In the latter part of the preoperational period, the child begins to have an understanding between reality and fantasy. The child also begins to understand sex roles in society – they understand that “mommies are women and daddies are men”.
Who is this course suitable for?
People who want to work with children and adolescents
- People who want to improve their job and career prospects in the field.
- Parents
- Carers
- Youth and Community workers
- Social workers
- Teachers
- Teaching Assistants
- Nursery workers
- Preschool workers
- Support workers and many more professions who work with children.....
