A pathway to private practice
Private Practice, March 2025

The work of a counsellor is always a journey of continual professional and personal learning and development. That is its beauty. And it has the huge advantage as a profession that the skills are highly transferable; we can carry our basic toolkit with us from one context to another, adding specialist knowledge and adaptations as we go. And it shows in the breadth of experience we can claim – the stickers on our luggage, if you like. Few of us will have followed a closely curated career pathway as we reach the end of our professional journey.

I left school in the mid-1980s with a set of abysmal qualifications. School bored me. I didn’t really know what to do next but managed to get onto a BA (Hons) business studies degree, which I hoped would be sufficiently broadly based to help me eventually find a purpose and meaning in life. I enjoyed two subject areas in particular – marketing and organisational psychology. Marketing initially triumphed, and I subsequently found a job with an advertising agency.Ìý

But, after a few years, I started to question my suitability for advertising. While I enjoyed the creative side, to me it seemed to be all about persuading people to buy something they often didn’t need; it was all about the exchange of money and conspicuous consumption. I felt the ‘people’ side was missing in my life. The only account I really enjoyed working on was Guide Dogs for the Blind Scotland, mainly because I’d make up excuses to visit their Scottish training HQ, where I would go and play with the puppies. The writing was on the wall. I was a people person – and a puppy person.Ìý

Eureka momentÌý

One constant for me during my first university degree and beyond was that I always seemed to be the person folk would seek out, albeit usually in a pub, to talk about the struggles in their lives – relationship issues, losses, stresses, worries, anxieties and so on. I enjoyed being able to help. When my partner at the time raised the idea of me training to be a counsellor, it was a eureka moment and the planets started to align.Ìý

I tested the water with a certificate in counselling skills, then completed a full-time diploma in counselling. Both gave me the skills and competences to start my new career. During the diploma, I completed two placements to build up my practice hours with clients – one at a GP practice and the other at a private therapy centre. They were very different environments, and that is when I realised that I could be a counsellor in different contexts – that counselling training is where you learn the therapeutic skills that you can then carry with you into a wide range of practice contexts. Ìý

But my diploma course provided very little information and guidance about these varied, different environments and what it’s like to work in them. And when I was researching for my first book, Experiences of Person-Centred Counselling Training,¹ I realised this lack of preparation for a counselling career and teaching about the different options ahead was common throughout the UK.Ìý

Fast-forward to 2022, and my nephew began to show an interest in training to be a counsellor. ‘What’s it like?’ he asked. I gave him some pointers and a few books that I felt would provide him with a broad picture. Then he asked, ‘But where could I work?’ So, I talked about my own experience of working as a counsellor in private practice, in primary and secondary care, in the workplace, employee assistance programmes (EAPs) and universities, plus a foray into coaching and mentoring. I didn’t give him any books to read about the different counselling contexts because I couldn’t find any.Ìý

Some of the best business ideas emerge from identifying a need or a gap in the market, and the same applies with books. So, I spotted a gap in the counselling literature, providing the vital information about counselling career development pathways and the different sectors where you can work. It took nearly two years to pull together a crack team of some 60 contributors and tease out a representative insight into what it’s like to practise in a range of settings. Ìý

Choices, choices…Ìý

Do you choose your preferred sector, or does it choose you? Much can depend on the work opportunities in your local area. When I was a workplace counsellor, I found many colleagues had previous experience in other roles and organisations before training to be a counsellor, so they were already familiar with industrial, commercial and business settings.Ìý

A major component of the ethical frameworks produced by our professional bodies is the commitment to ensure we’re competent to practise safely and effectively, as well as ethically. While ultimately the workÌýis all about the client you see in front of you, the context can have a massive impact. Understanding the environment in which you work is crucial to your therapeutic competence needed to work there.

Private Practice, March 2025

Every year, Â鶹ԭ´´ conducts a workplace mapping survey to fill out a picture of the working practices of their members. In their latest survey, the largest majority of members worked in private practice (nearly 70%); nearly one third (30%) worked in the third, charitable and voluntary sector, and after that the numbers drop sharply in relation to the other main settings and contexts.^2Ìý

The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) conducted a similar mapping survey of its members in 2020. UKCP tends to represent mainly psychodynamic therapists, rather than counsellors. Specifically, of the 2,180 members who completed the survey, 80% were working in private practice, education or the charity/volunteer sector; 163 worked in an EAP; 67 worked for an organisation funded by their local authority; 1,850 worked in private or independent practice; 107 worked for a non-NHS health service provider; 487 were based in the charity/volunteer sector; 208 worked in further or higher education and 130 worked in schools. Of the 20% working in the NHS, the majority were paid at Band 7 or Band 8a – that is, at the more experienced, senior end of the NHS pay scales for psychological practitioners.^3Ìý

Setting up in private practiceÌý

Early in my career, I was drawn to the notion of private practice; being my own boss and having freedom and variety, but I needed to have a long, hard think about whether I could do it and if it was right for me.Ìý

If you work as a counsellor employed by an organisation, you usually have guidance, mentoring and support in place, together with a plethora of systems, policies and procedures, all written up for you to follow. In private practice, this largely becomes your responsibility. How will you find clients? How will you manage your diary and workload? How do clients contact you and how and when do you respond? What paperwork do you have in place, including contracts? Are you compliant with all the necessary business requirements and regulations, including tax returns (and paying tax), registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office, having appropriate insurances in place and following GDPR (data protection) best practice guidelines?Ìý

How do you market yourself and promote your practice? Do you need a website and how can you best present yourself and what you offer? How do you deal with finances, payments and invoicing? What will you do if a client doesn’t pay you? If you’re impacted by particularly emotionally draining work, what support is available to you? Does your supervisor have sufficient understanding of private practice to give you the support you need?Ìý

When I started in private practice after qualifying, several issues emerged that I’d not expected. For instance, I found it quite lonely and isolating – I didn’t have colleagues I could debrief with after a difficult session or a tiring day. My supervisor was excellent but sometimes supervision wasn’t enough. I had one client who would test my boundaries, phoning me at night in crisis, another who gave me concerns about my own physical safety, and another who said they’d fallen in love with me. And I was living alone and working alone, from home. When you’re counselling in an organisation, you have greater protections in place and colleagues for support; in private practice, you need to plan and prepare for this yourself.Ìý

Is private practice right for you?Ìý

So, again, is private practice right for you? Caz Binstead sums it up nicely in the following list of ‘known knowns’: ‘I know myself. I know who I am. I know what kind of business I run. I know how I want to present myself. I know how I run my practice. I know my worries. I know the things that could crop up. I know how I am with boundaries.’^4Ìý

Most people in private practice either work from home or rent a room elsewhere. Post-COVID, many are also working online, so can potentially be based anywhere that offers the necessary basics. The main benefit of working from home is that you’re not paying rent for a counselling room (which may stand empty a lot of the time). However, this is your home and your living space. Is it convenient, safe and appropriate for you and your clients? There are different considerations for both parties. How might you both feel meeting in your home?Ìý

You’ll need to inform your house insurance company that you’re using your home as a business premises, so your premiums may go up. Think about the client experience: from entering the door, how do they get to your counselling room in a way that’s safe for them and maintains your privacy and personal boundaries?Ìý

Even things like the layout, décor and furnishings can be important. Initially, I furnished my counselling room with two large, matching leather swivel chairs, which reclined slightly. Most clients loved that they could recline slightly or swivel round gently. But a few larger clients found them unstable, so I introduced a sofa (which could seat a larger client and gave clients space for handbags, laptop cases, jackets etc), and a matching chair for me, which seemed to work better.Ìý

I chose the pictures carefully and ensured I had no personal photos on display. I put my qualifications and insurance certificates into clip frames and hung them on the wall. Again, most clients seemed to find this reassuring, although one thought I was being smug. I had to consider the state of my bathroom, in case clients needed to use it. What was on show? What did my choice of shampoo and deodorant say about me? It became the least cluttered and certainly the cleanest room in my house. And at one stage, I had a large, illuminated fish tank in my counselling room, quietly bubbling away in the background. All but one client seemed to like this and felt it created a relaxing atmosphere. One client arrived for a session and said they wanted to use the space just to sit quietly, watch the fish and use this as a time to reflect, think and contemplate. It was the longest silence I ever experienced. But another client berated me for keeping fish in an aquarium, saying they should be free and not kept as pets or treated as toys.Ìý

You can’t always win!Ìý

You can’t always win! But it’s useful to think about the consequences of your choices and how your clients might react. This is where supervision can be helpful, giving you a chance to reflect on client feedback – the good and not so good. Based at home, I worked as an affiliate for several employee assistance programme (EAP) providers. Each wanted to inspect my premises, either in person or from photos I was asked to provide. It was a bit unnerving to be ‘inspected’; it made me realise clients might be consciously or unconsciously doing the same. And I should point out that working for an EAP affiliate is not an entry-level occupation; normally providers require you to be accredited and have several years’ post-qualification experience. Ìý

Setting up in private practice and developing and maintaining it requires us to explore, tease out and answer multiple considerations. This sector context can be hugely rewarding. You’re your own boss, you can pick and choose how often you work and, potentially, with whom and for how long. If you’re thinking of private practice as a career path, I wish you the very best. You’ll join tens of thousands of fellow private practitioners and, hopefully, make a powerful, positive and purposeful impact on the clients you meet. Good luck!Ìý