Diploma in Child Psychotherapeutic Counselling
Course start/end dates
September 2026 – July 2027.
Time commitment
A maximum of 23 days over three academic terms.
Mainly Tuesdays
Students remain in their clinical placement and also are required to continue in personal therapy for a minimum of 35 hours per academic year.
What qualification will I obtain on completion?
Diploma in Child Psychotherapeutic Counselling.
What affiliated organisations will I be registered with?
After successful completion of the training, accruing 100 client hours and passing BACP’s Certificate of Proficiency (multiple choice test) you are eligible to apply for BACP registration. This means being added to the national register for counsellors (used by the general public to find a counsellor).
After successful completion of the training and 450 clinical hours you are eligible to register with UKCP.
Who is the Awarding Body?
Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education.
Entry requirements
- Successful completion of the second year of training and agreement from Course Director.
- Emotional robustness, self-awareness, empathy and an interest in the arts.
- Undergraduate degree desired but not essential.
- Counselling Skills qualification (can be completed whilst undertaking training). If you do not have a Level Two or Level three counselling qualification (it cannot be simply a certificate of attendance) to fulfil this requirement you will need to attend on our internal counselling trainings. You have a choice:
a) Live : Certificate in Counselling Skills (teenagers and adults) this is 4 days over two weekends.
b) On-line Certificate in Child and Adolescent Counselling Skills ( 6 days over weekends)
These both run twice a year, please enquire info@iate.uk
What qualifications or skills do I need before I can enrol?
- A demonstrable interest in counselling, psychotherapy or working therapeutically with children is essential. Experience of working with children is desired but not essential. Previous short courses or experience working therapeutically with children or adults is a plus.
Expected prior knowledge
- The ability to work with competence, empathic attunement and depth with a full range of affect states or the willingness to do so.
- Emotional and social intelligence and the capacity for introspection. To have an awareness of own personal history from a psychological viewpoint.
Fees
Year 3 (Child Psychotherapeutic Counselling): £6,500.00
(but you can pay termly or monthly direct debit)
Additional Fees for 2025/26
Year 3 Viva £550.00
Year 3 Dissertation £550.00
Counselling Skills qualification
Additional Fees for 2026/27
Year 3 Viva £570.00
Year 3 Dissertation £570.00
Counselling Skills qualification
Please note additional fees for personal therapy, supervision, DBS, insurance and travel costs.
Funding & Visas
IATE courses do not qualify for government education funding. As such, students cannot fund our courses via the Student or Advanced Learner Loans.
As we are not able to sponsor international students, you must have the right to live, work and/or study in the UK to join one of our on-site training programmes. Please note that we do not give advice on visas or visa requirements to live, work and/or study in the UK.
What if I miss a day?
It is essential that all days are attended and 100% attendance is expected of all students. However, we understand that sometimes illness, child care, religious holidays or other life events get in the way.
Students are allowed to miss one day per academic year but any further missed training needs to be re-attended the following year. This is because there are a specific number of days/hours required for registration/accreditation.
Missed days will need to be paid for at the retake day fee for the year it will be attended. If you have approval from the course director, or extenuating circumstances, the fee may be waived.
It is the student’s responsibility to liaise with the Academic Officer and book in and pay if necessary for any missed days.
Students that have completed the taught component of the course but still have outstanding assessments or are working to complete their clinical hours must enrol as an Interim Student for each academic year until they receive their award.
The fee to enrol as an Interim Student for 2025/26 is £194. The interim fee for 2026/27 will be £240.
Employment opportunities and typical employment pathways
- Child counsellor.
- School counsellor.
- CAMHS worker.
- Mental Health Lead in schools.
This is an optional third year after the Diploma in Child Counselling Year 1 and 2.
Overview
This optional Year 3 qualifies you as a child psychotherapeutic counsellor with UKCP registration, enabling you to take on more complex cases and with a higher pay scale. All years of the training are very practically based with a wealth of interventions focused on trauma recovery and the alleviation of mental health problems in children and young people. Play therapy, sandplay and use of art media are key interventions.
Syllabus overview
Psychotherapeutic theory and neuroscientific evidence to implementation in the therapy room
- Integrative Psychotherapy: from theory to treatment and clinical practice.
- Finding your own model of integration.
- De-Mystifying Research.
- Theory and process of separations, endings and loss.
Managing clinical practise and cultural change
- Writing referral letters, assessments & reports.
- The evolution of the role of the school Counsellors and Senior Mental Health Leads.
- How to work with and support school staff with classroom behaviour, boundaries & mental Health.
- Establishing trauma-informed cultures in schools.
- Strategies for working with parents & parent/child work.
Social injustice and mental health
- The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF).
- Diversity, discrimination and intolerance of difference.
Child Psychiatry
- Key causes of child and adolescent mental health difficulties.
- What every child professional needs to know about the treatment of child and adolescent mental ill-health, psychiatric diagnosis and diagnostic inflation.
- The muddle between trauma and psychiatric diagnosis.
- Trauma Informed alternatives to psychiatric diagnosis: hearing people’s stories.
- What every child mental health professional needs to know about giving psychiatric drugs to children and young people.
- The impact of parent’s unprocessed painful life experience on child mental health, and key relational interventions.
Client groups
- Working with children/young people who have been sexually abused.
- Working with children with developmental trauma, looked after children & adoption.
- Working with children/young people addressing gender, transgender and sexuality in the therapy room.
- Further exploration of working with children/young people with complex needs.
Clinical skills
- Re-visiting clinical skills: Revising & deepening.
- Sandplay and the six principles of therapeutic change (EFT).
- Revisiting the Royal Roads to the Unconscious.
- Deepening relationship through the use of the creative arts.
- Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) and the process of change.
- EFT through big empathy drawings (student case material).
- Working with defences and maladaptive emotions.
- Working with issues around social injustice, Eco-Anxiety and climate change.
- Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic interventions with teenagers.
- Case discussions.
Book interview day Book free briefing Download prospectus How to apply