Too Much or Too Little: Determining Counselling Workload in a Student Services Environment

Abstract

In April this year I sent out an email to the ANZSSA list asking what the recommendation for the number of hours a counsellors should see clients per week. I was also interested to know if other services included 'emergency‘ or 'priority‘ appointments in this number of hours. My email sparked a flood of responses, showing that this is certainly an issue that provokes interest from ANZSSA members. In this article I will give some information on the recommendations of other associations and organisations on this matter, as well as giving the guidelines developed by the ANZSSA Counsellor‘s Special Interest Group in 1994. I will also include the responses from ANZSSA member to my original email, to give a picture of the number 'contact hours‘ in which counsellors are engaged.