ABSTRACT

From modest beginnings in the 1960s, counselling has expanded rapidly in Britain. The individual membership of the British Association for Counselling (BAC) has grown to over 13,000 individuals and almost 800 organizations in just under 20 years. This not only makes BAC the largest counselling organization nationally but also the largest outside the United States. With over two-thirds of the membership providing counselling as part of their employment, the association has been a major forum for considering professional issues. Such rapid growth requires an almost constant process of reassessment and adjustment which is not always tension free. The intimate friendliness of a small organization has been eroded by increased size. A degree of fragmentation into informal and formal divisions representing specific interests has been inevitable. Ray Woolfe, one of the authors of the first edition of this chapter (Dryden et al. 1989: 401), has likened the current state of counselling to a comet. The paid counsellors act as the nose cone, leading the way over professional issues because of their commitment to professionalization and access to resources. They merge into the voluntary counsellors who form the next stage of the comet. These maintain the vision of counselling as contributors to social change by a personal commitment which is independent of payment. There is a degree of interchange of people between the cone and this next stage as many volunteers have the opportunity for earning fees as the demand for counselling grows. Similarly, many paid workers also work voluntarily. The boundary between this stage and the comet's tail is similarly ill-defined. The tail consists of the enormous numbers of people who have been influenced by the values, theory and methods of counselling. These they apply to other caring roles as users of counselling skills in advisory and welfare services, health care, education, and many other roles. The metaphorical comet encompasses many more people than the membership of BAC. Dr Raj Persaud has stated that the Department of Employment estimates that over 2.5 million people use counselling (or counselling skills) as a major component of their jobs. It is estimated that over 270,000 people provide counselling in the voluntary sector with about 30,000 people earning a living from counselling (Persaud 1993: 8). Even when allowance is made for the estimated nature of these figures, the counselling movement is a substantial size with considerable potential for both social good and harm.