Counselling Skills and Sociology BA (Hons)

Counselling Skills

Enhance your ability to communicate and gain highly developed embedded counselling skills to help others in a wide range of people-related employment contexts.

Chester has a long-established national reputation for the provision of counselling education. We are linked to an exciting and cutting edge research community and the course is delivered by practitioners and researchers who draw on their own professional and academic expetise. We care about our students and seek to ensure that they have the best experience possible. The teaching is largely experiential with a strong practical component. This is enhanced by guest lecturers who bring in knowledge and skills from the wider professional and academic community. We currently run an anual field trip to a prison as part of an exploration of the use of counselling skills in the workplace.

The course provides you with a chance to gain highly developed embedded counselling skills to help others and can provide the foundations for further therapeutic training for those who wish to continue onto professional counsellor qualification routes. It is a practical, reflective and academic course which combines theory with social and contextual considerations. You will learn about a range of counselling and therapeutic approaches, developing yourself awareness and ability to communicate with people in an ethical, empathic and professional way. It is in our view a unique chance to study for a multidisciplinary degree with a strong practical and employable component.

Sociology

Sociology is the ‘science of society,’ and so involves studying how processes of social change affect peoples’ everyday lives.

Through studying Sociology at Chester, you will be given the skills and support you need in order to develop a ‘sociological imagination’ of your own. You will be introduced to cutting-edge research and theoretical perspectives that will help you to challenge dominant understandings of social problems, issues and debates.

Our teaching team has a wide range of backgrounds and experience. Modules are written by staff in line with their research interests and include areas such as inequality and the welfare state, race and racism, gender identity and the body, globalization, sustainability, protest and social change. How is ‘globalisation’ reshaping the world we live in? What are the major social divisions and conflicts affecting society today? How does the mass media influence our perception of these conflicts and divisions? These are just some of the questions that you will be asked to think about while studying Sociology at Chester.

Job prospects

Sociology graduates pursue diverse career paths including in the public sector and civil service, politics and government, social work, charity and advocacy work, public relations, advertising, market research, journalism, academia and teaching. The critical and analytical skills developed through studying Sociology are highly transferable and extremely sought after by employers.

The course develops strong skills and knowledge which are tranferrable to a wide range of occupations. Graduates may pursue careers and training in a range of areas such as education, the police force, prison work, social work, law and retail management. Graduates may also pursue further therapeutic training or academic research.