Children's Rights and Counselling

Children's Rights and Counselling introduces key ideas about the rights of children and young people to access counselling in a range of settings. It identifies key rights held by children and young people in England and Wales to confidentiality and to access therapy alongside court proceedings. It links these rights to crucial ethical values and principles held by therapists, such as respect for client welfare, participation and autonomy. This training pack equips a group facilitator to lead sessions in: types of children's rights to counselling power issues in relation to children's rights to counselling the historical development of children's rights to counselling current law on children's rights to counselling. The pack can be used as a stand-alone training resource, or can follow on with preparatory training for participants on children's rights, delivered using Exploring Children's Rights. The latter covers important developments such as the Children Act (1989), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989) and the Human Rights Act (1998).
The training offers two versions of the exercise: a group activity version (runs for 1 hour 30mins) and an individual/pair activity (1 hour 30 mins). The training will be of interest to anyone who wishes to introduce the complex issue of children's rights and access to counselling in an informative and challenging way. It is particularly relevant to teachers and trainers in the fields of education, health, social work, counselling, psychotherapy and counselling psychology, but is designed for use by anyone who works with children and young people and those with a real concern for promoting their rights, particularly with regard to counselling.