ONCE UPON A DREAM; Clinical Practice Achieved!

Writing my Placement Report - the missive to end all missives!

After 15 months of working entirely for free at Cruse Bereavement Care, this week I have finally completed the 100 clinical practice hours required for qualification. Hurrah! Its been a long year or so of supplying seemingly endless cups of tea and sympathy, but placement has been the most enjoyable aspect of the whole five years of training.  It has taught me that yes, I am a good counsellor and I can do this job. It has been very rewarding to see my clients recover from their state of shock, process their grief and start living life again.  

As part of the placement aspect of the diploma there is rather a lot of paperwork to complete - forms that have to be filled in for supervision to verify that I have indeed completed  over 100 hours in one-to-one practice and I've not just invented the numbers; contracts that had to be created by me and approved by the college and the placement organisation; reports on my professionalism from the placement managers and my clinical supervisor.  All in all there are about 50 pages of red tape that I need to scan into my computer and upload to the examining body.  And it all has to be meticulously organised and uploaded in date order.  Thank goodness I have a scanner, or I'd be cuing in the college library to use theirs. Now that academia has gone digital, the days of the hard-copy portfolio are over. 

In addition there is the final piece of writing to do, which is my Placement Report essay.  This is a long tedious piece of academic work that I imagine will be around 20,000 words in length when it is finished. It really is "the missive to end all missives"!  I've only just started it this week and so far it is going quite well. While I hate academic writing, I do try to have some fun with it by seeing how 'clinical' I can make myself sound!  It isn't the kind of writing I enjoy most, but it is always nice to get things right and feel super smart.  I expect to have this done and the whole unit uploaded by the end of this month. 

So now that all the boxes are ticked, in terms of the paperwork that depends on other people, and I have a stack of red tape waiting to be processed in due course, I am beginning to see the light at the end of a long, five year training, tunnel.   Now it is just down to me to write this report, which puts me firmly back in control - a place I like to be! I hated waiting for other people to fill out forms for me! Even though they did it in a timely manner, it still gave me anxiety because it is the only aspect of the training that does not depend on me.  It was outside of my control, and that really doesn't sit well with me. I like to be in control of my life.

I am starting to feel a sense of relief that very soon, it will all be over.  I have done what I can to ensure my success and I believe that academically I am on track to pass, so now that the clinical practice boxes have been ticked too, I shouldn't have to worry too much.  All being well I should Qualify this summer.  I'm not counting my chickens, but honestly, pass or fail, I will just be glad to see the back of it all!  I want to get back to my real writing. 

I leave my placement with Cruse at the end of the month, with plans to possibly return there later this year, just to keep my hand in with the profession I have trained for.  In the meantime I have signed up for another course in Life-Coaching, which will take me over the summer.  This was on my list of goals for 2018 so I'm happy to have that ticked off already.  As a self-help author, life-coaching is something I do anyway, so it makes sense to get a qualification in this area.  It will sit neatly alongside both my writing and counselling work, spanning the two and helping to bridge the gap between them. 

And of course I will be able to concentrate on my published writing once more, now that my training is all but over. So far I have had several psychotherapy features published in magazines and I plan to continue with this line of work, building my platform in this genre and using my previous success as a Wiccan author as a strong foundation.  One of the reasons I am so relieved to have achieved my clinical practice hours is that I will be free to write whatever takes my fancy once again.  My creativity has been stifled by academic responsibilities and essay deadlines for the past five years, so it will be nice to be back where I started as an author, writing anything that interests me - and more importantly, getting paid for it!

Mostly though, I am just starting to feel like I can breathe again. It's a nice feeling. I am almost there. Time for an episode of Scream Queens as a wee reward...