Are your students looking to use counselling skills to enhance their existing helping role? Are they taking the first steps towards becoming a professional counsellor? This practical guide will provide readers with the ideal ‘way-in’, showing them what helping and counselling is all about. Part 1: Counselling Skills will introduce readers to the underpinning knowledge and practical tools needed to develop a range of helping skills for use in a variety of helping roles, showing what it means to work safely and ethically. Part 2: Counselling Studies will help them take their understanding further by considering in detail important theories and professional issues, preparing them to work as a professional counsellor. Part 3: Counselling Study Skills will offer practical advice and hints and tips to help them make the best start on their counselling portfolio, including journal and essay writing skills, research skills and how to get inspired and overcome blocks to learning. The new edition now includes a more detailed discussion of key theories, has a new chapter on self care, and is fully up to date with the occupational and professional standards and ethical frameworks. Packed full of practical activities and written in a supportive conversational style, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn counselling skills or embarking on their first stage of training to be a counsellor.