Opportunities for Placements and Volunteer Counselling Opportunities in South Oxfordshire

We are now recruiting for placements for September.  We encourage you to check out our placement criteria and ensure you can meet these before sending in your application as this will avoid any disappointment. Thank you.

“Riverside is one of the best Counselling Services and Placement contexts I have ever come across. Highly professional, thoughtful and supportive, it offers a unique resource for clients and trainees. The support for trainees is outstanding, offering a buddy scheme, first-rate supervision, weekly CPD and clinical discussion groups. Riverside provides many opportunities for professional development with different client groups, as well as assessment experience for trainees developing their competence.”

Alistair Ross, Associate Professor and Course Director of Psychodynamic Studies, Oxford University.

Are you looking for a placement at a dynamic, well-established counselling service, where you will be supported and encouraged to develop your skills?

Our criteria:

• To be on a BACP/UKCP/BPS or BPC accredited training the duration of which should be a minimum of 2 years (please note that a BACP approved training does not meet this criteria).
• Able to commit to a 2 year placement.
• Have attended an introductory counselling course prior to your training and/or had experience of working in a helping capacity prior to beginning clinical work.
• Be in weekly personal therapy throughout the duration of your training and for a minimum of 2 years in total.  Your therapist should be a BACP accredited, UKCP/BPC registered or BPS chartered and have a minimum of 5 years post qualification clinical experience.

Our requirements while on placement:

• Be available on Monday mornings until 12:30 for Team Meetings and Trainings.  We have a monthly on-line team meeting and a termly F2F community meeting.  Compulsory  (ie. safeguarding training) and other optional trainings also take place on Mondays.
• Be able to work at one of our 2 hubs (Henley, Wallingford) and online.  While we take into account personal preference, counsellors are placed at hubs according to client need.
• Take responsibility for and engage with, by completing in a timely way, the administrative tasks that relate to the client work. Training will be provided to work using our IT and cloud-based-client-management system.
• Gradually build up to working with 4 clients per week, offering some evening hours where possible.
• Attend supervision every 2 weeks, to meet BACP and course ratio requirements
• To enable us to continue to offer high quality clinical support we ask for a small contribution towards supervision of £50 per month while counsellors are in training.

How to apply:

If you meet the criteria and are able to meet our placement requirements as outlined above, please complete the placement application and email this together with a personal statement and CV to: