Enhancing performance, extending to new levels

Our students have very diverse and colourful backgrounds. Many of them are teachers; social workers; administrative personnel such as executive officers, human resource managers, corporate managers or trainers; church pastors; medical and health professionals such as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational and speech therapists, psychologist assistants; volunteer counsellors, research assistants, legal practitioners; police and probation officers; personal coaches and trainers and others.

Our programme provides students with unique opportunities to strengthen their knowledge and skills in counselling; in turn, they are better equipped to meet the challenges in their existing positions or voluntary organisations where they are affiliated with.

In career terms, graduates may:

• Remain in their current positions with or without newer levels of responsibilities;
• Acquire new jobs but in similar field of human services; or
• Get promoted

Becoming a professional counsellor

When we conducted the “MSocSc (Counselling) Graduates Destination Survey” in 2012, 45 respondents who graduated in the years between 2009 and 2011 participated and we noticed that:

• Approximately 65% set a goal to change their career to become a professional counsellor (paid or volunteer) when they enrolled to the programme; and
• Within this group, in about three years about 40% of the graduates were able to achieve the goal.

We want to highlight that the success seemed to be determined by four major factors: 1) having relevant counselling related experience in the past; 2) time taken in developing networks and making oneself known in the field of human services; 3) arranging ongoing supervision and support; and 4) public’s recognition of the role of counsellors in Hong Kong.