Counsellors Victoria is a professional development and networking provider with membership giving access to 10 professional development presentations each year and held networking events. Our Board constantly strive to offer insightful and engaging professional development opportunities to our members. To grow in this endeavour, we welcome feedback from our members and have collated some of our received Frequently Asked Questions.

 

Q. Can Counsellors Victoria offer more Face-to-Face events?

We hear the value this may bring to some of our members, however given the resources and time required to organise face-to-face events by our volunteer board members; and given the attendance numbers of recent face-to-face events, Counsellors Victoria will not organise any face-to-face events at this stage to remain focused on delivering Live professional development training to its members.

 

Q. Can the Live professional development sessions be recorded?

Our Board has considered this at length and at this stage, will not be able to offer recordings of live events. Some of the components we have taken into consideration in making this choice, are concepts around:

• Intellectual Property of presenters
• The compulsory completion of an assessment for Certificates and point eligibility with registration bodies
• Respecting the privacy and confidentiality of attendees, such as names, faces and discussions
• Managing resources and administration required to protect, edit, upload and share recordings

 

Q. Can Counsellors Victoria offer Live professional development on different days or times?

This is another topic that our Board has thoroughly discussed, as we hear this may enable some members to attend our Live sessions more consistently. We have decided to maintain running the Live professional development sessions every second Saturday of the months from February to November inclusive, to reduce confusion and/or miscommunication. Additionally, with the current resources at our disposal, it is not possible to offer additional sessions on different days or times.

 

Q. I don’t always feel the Live professional development offered is beneficial for my clinical practice, what should I do?

Counsellors Victoria’s primary goal is to provide Live professional development opportunities to members at an affordable rate. As our membership numbers grow, we will inadvertently encounter a greater variety of therapists at different stages of their career, with different clinical modalities and experiences. Where possible, we try to cater to as many requests as we can, and encourage you to connect with our Board members if you know of presenters that may be interested in connecting with us. Please note that we have financial considerations to take into account when processing requests, so may not be able to engage with every suggested presenter.

Additionally, here at Counsellors Victoria we hope to promote a community for clinicians to connect with and learn from one another, and hope that you may be encouraged to attend Live professional development sessions to participate in discussion and/or networking afterwards, even if the content may not be new or relevant to your practice.

 

Q. Where should you go when you have a complaint about a counsellor?

For queries regarding complaints about counsellors go to the Health Complaints Commissioner: https://hcc.vic.gov.au

   

Q. Does Counsellors Victoria recommend counsellors from their membership for specialist areas?  (Eg. Trauma, Grief, Family, Couples, Children etc.)

CV does not recommend counsellors or their modalities to the public due to the following:

• Counsellors Victoria has a wide range of members who are at varying stages of their counselling career, some being students, employed, contracted, in private practice, semi-retired or retired. To provide fair services to all members, the Counsellors Victoria Board endeavours to remain as neutral as possible in representing its members as a collective, rather than as individual clinicians.
• Counsellors Victoria is not a marketing platform, or a search engine for registered members. As such, the Board of Counsellors Victoria cannot recommend specific counsellors or modalities, however we encourage the utilisation of major therapist registration body search engines, such as ACA, PACFA and APS.
• Counsellors Victoria is not a supervision platform, or a counselling advice platform. If further support is required regarding clinical practice or client referrals, we would encourage members to consult with their clinical supervisors and peers about best practice.

 

If you have any further questions, you can use our Contact Us page to get in touch.