ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with my own training as a counsellor in 1969 and traces counselling developments in Britain over the past thirty years. In the early 1970s the first batch of trained counsellors were taking up posts as trainers and they searched for useful models. These initially came from the United States, and the influence of Rogers, Carkhuff, Egan, Gilmore, Kagan and Ivey is highlighted. In the mid-1980s a significant impact came from the British Association for Counselling when it set up the BAC Course Recognition Group and in 1988 produced a scheme for the recognition of counsellor training courses. This raised issues such as eclecticism or integration, supervision, standardisation, and training for trainers, and these are discussed against the backcloth of current professional and educational developments. This leads to the conclusion that counselling training will come of age when there are properly recognised courses for counsellor trainers world-wide.
