How We Support our Students

Courses at The Sherwood Institute are, academically and on a personal level, both highly fulfilling, and demanding, as you would expect for Masters level courses of this nature.

The type and quality of support we offer our students is therefore particularly important.

The role of Programme Leader and that of the tutors is to offer students the guidance - professional, academic and personal - to give students the maximum opportunity to enhance the quality of their therapeutic work

Fulfilling potential and enhancing the quality of life is what counselling and psychotherapy are all about: clients come to therapists because their potential for success, happiness, satisfaction or peace is not being fulfilled; they feel lost and perhaps desperate.  The therapist’s role is to help the client learn to find more of that fulfilment. The role of The Sherwood Institute is to help our students to fulfil their potential for success in helping their clients, and meanwhile to enhance the quality and level of fulfilment in their own lives

Specific support for students is available on training days, in the large group, in small group sessions, and for individual consultations where necessary.

The different areas of the course involve personal growth, clinical skills, academic success and the ability to relate well with others.  In all these areas there is a blend of the personal responsibility of the student to invest themselves in all these areas, and that of the Programme staff to support students in doing so.

In addition, it is a requirement of all our programmes that trainees/students be in weekly personal therapy. We are happy to recommend suitable therapists in your geographical area. We believe this is vital for those undertaking a training that touches on personal issues for themselves and to support them the work with clients.

Similarly, we follow the guidelines of the main accrediting bodies in requiring that, once they are seeing clients, our trainees receive additional support for their clinical practice from a qualified supervisor. Again, we will be glad to provide names of supervisors.

We also support our students through the paper and online resources we provide, with the books, journals, case studies and research dissertations available in our journal room and library, and the online support available through the University of Birmingham.

From your first day with us, through to the celebratory events that attend your final award, we aim to provide a welcoming, warm, stimulating and supportive atmosphere in all those areas that inform the very nature of the courses we run: the personal, the professional (clinical) the academic and the relational.  Our experience of involvement in this field goes back to 1987 and beyond.  Some of us have 30 years’ experience in enhancing the quality of people’s lives and helping them to achieve their potential: we’d like to do the same for you.