ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with one of the most important parts of counselling psychologist's training – clinical placement. It aims to guide them through the application process; help them understand what training programmes are looking for; and orientate them to the some of the realities of life as a trainee, including finding clinical placements. The chapter outlines the various strands of taught-route training, and goes through them again, with some notes about how they play out differently as a candidate on the Qualification in Counselling Psychology (QCoP). It considers life as a taught-route candidate versus life as a QCoP trainee. Although there are many academic elements, counselling psychology training is primarily a professional one. Even though all counselling psychology training encompasses a variety of models, a programme with existential-phenomenological therapy as its core model will have a different feel from a programme anchored in psychodynamic or cognitive-behavioural approaches.
