384: Closing Your Counselling Practice

Counselling Tutor podcast

In Episode 384, hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly navigate three critical stages of a counselling career: closing a practice, finding work after qualification, and selecting

Key takeaways

• Rory emphasizes that closing a practice requires managing both planned endings and unexpected events like illness or bereavement.
• The BACP ethical framework is undergoing changes that will come into effect on November 3, 20．

Main topics

• Closing a counselling practice
• Finding work after qualifying

Notable quotes

Every counsellor, as we go into practice, there's going to be a day that we go out of practice.

Conclusion

This episode serves as a practical guide for managing professional tra

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) As a qualified practitioner, you'll know that our understanding of autism is ever-evolving. More autistic clients are coming into the therapy room and people are actively looking for a therapist who understands neurodivergence. Counseling Tutor's Autism Informed Practice Training is a 45-hour CPD qualification built by a neurodivergent team. A balance of self-directed learning and an intimate live workshop where the theory comes to life. Download your free handbook at counsellingtutor.com, click products and select autism informed practice. Speaker 2 (0:42) Hello and welcome to episode 384 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast. I'm Rory and my guest today is Wayne Cousins, who is not only my neighbour, but also studied at the same college I did and was taught by a tutor I worked alongside many years ago. The world of counselling is really, really small. Wayne joins me to discuss that much talked about subject. finding paid work after qualifying. He shares his own journey, explains how he secured work as a counsellor only a few months after completing his training. It's an interesting and encouraging conversation which demonstrates there really is work available within the counselling profession. So with that said, let's roll the intro. Welcome Speaker 1 (1:32) to the Counselling Tutor Podcast. the must-listen-to podcast for counselors, psychotherapists, and counseling students. Here are your hosts, Rory Lees-Oaks and Ken Kelly. Speaker 4 (1:50) Hello and a very warm welcome to episode 384 of the Counselling Tutor podcast with Rory Lees-Oaks and Ken Kelly. Rory and I taking you on a journey today of three stops, starting with ethical, sustainable practice. Today we're looking at something that I think is a topic that is not spoken about often, and it's when you are closing or winding down. a counselling practice. That may be retirement. It may be that you're going in a different direction. So we're going to be discussing what we need to think about with that today. Then into practice matters. Rory, you've already beautifully teed up the interview. Finding work after qualifying, that's always an evergreen topic in our Facebook group, that's for sure. So definitely stay tuned for that one. And then student services. Today we are covering choosing the right counselling study books. So there you have it. That's our episode 384, starting off, Rory, with winding down or closing your counselling practice. I think we were just talking very, very recently, weren't we? Because this is a process that both of us have had to go through. I know you had a conversation day before yesterday, I think it was, where you were speaking to somebody else who brought this same topic up. But yet when you search for it, there's not a massive amount of information about it. And it occurs to me that... Every counsellor, as we go into practice, there's going to be a day that we go out of practice. So much information about going into practice, so little about going out of practice. What do we need to consider on this, Rory? Speaker 2 (3:22) Well, I mean, I think that we need to consider a lot of elements when we decide to hang up our ears, as we sometimes say, and move on in our lives from our practice. And I think that one of the main considerations that... therapists really need to have top of mind is what the ethical frameworks say about winding up or closing a counselling practice now we've we discussed in the last episode of the of the podcast about the new BACP ethical framework which comes comes into I'm going to use the word force it does sound rather harsh but it comes into play on the 3rd of November 2026. And within that framework, there's a thread that runs through it. Having read it quite a lot, there's a thread that runs through it. And that thread is collaboration, collaboration with the client. So when we're winding down and closing our practice, what we really need to think about is how we explain our decisions, why we decided to close it, and also making sure that those... those clients that we've had in the past still have the protection both the Data Protection Act gives them and also the ethical framework we're working under gives them and this is outlined really in section 4.5. It requires reasonable advance notice for planned breaks and endings and careful management of unplanned endings. Remember Ken that When people end the practice, it might not be a decision they made over a long period of time. They may have an illness or a bereavement, and they may have to close it very, very quickly. It's not, I'm going to retire next year, so I'll start to wind it down now. It may be that someone cannot practice, in which case they need to have things in place before that happens. So we need to plan ahead. I guess that's what I'm saying, Ken. Speaker 4 (5:35) Agreed. And I think that that dovetails beautifully into episode 383 of the Counselling Tutor podcast, our last episode where we spoke about a clinical will, because a clinical will is thinking ahead about what happens if something happens that is not planned and I'm not able to be there for my client. So it does dovetail into that. But there's more to it than just that side of it. There is the unplanned side, but there's also a planned side where you go, you know, this is it for me now. I've come to the end of my time. And I know that, I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, Rory, but your journey from, you know what, I think... this is the end for me to actually stepping out of practice was around about two years. It wasn't something that you decided and then quickly implemented. You had time. And I guess there is a luxury in having that time. But I wonder if we have got some distance and we are considering it, what might we take into consideration? Speaker 2 (6:37) Well, I think first of all, we need to give notice. to our clients. And in my own case, I made a conscious decision to wind my practice down. So I took my website down, I took my advertising down, and I didn't take on any more clients. And I eventually had just one client, I had some supervisees. I gave my supervisees about a year's notice. And I said, if you find someone you know, before I decide to finish, then, you know, please, you know, do go, you know, don't feel you have to hang on with me. And all of them actually did, you know, about four or five weeks before I finished, they went on to find other supervisors. In terms of the clients I had, I gave, I think, six months notice. six months notice and before i said anything i sat with my supervisor collaboration again and spoke about how i might um how i might do this what i need to put in place um and it went actually very well i had a i had a lot of information and and i offered to um you know six months lead time and also um offered to signpost if necessary. And as it happened, it came to a natural, and I have to say quite lovely ending. And we both went our separate ways. So I think the first thing is planned endings and give notice. Don't say I'm finishing next week. You know, don't say that. Speaker 4 (8:29) That's right out. Speaker 2 (8:30) Oh, by the way, I'm packing in next week. So if you can find another therapist, that would be lovely. That's guaranteed isn't going to go down very well with your professional body or the client. And really, it's not on. Obviously, if, you know, you get a difficult medical condition or a difficult bereavement, that could happen. But if you've planned for this, you know, I always say, you know, hope for the best and plan for the worst. If you've planned for this, you'll have. something you can put into place. It might be, you know, some therapists who you've talked to who would happy take on your client load should either of you have to stop instantly. So it's all about planning, Ken. And the reason we plan is to minimize harm and disruption, isn't it? Speaker 4 (9:22) That's it. 100%. And you're speaking about a planned ending here. Speaker 4 (9:27) The beauty of this is there's nothing new in this because when you studied counseling, you would have studied endings in some detail. Every session, every client that we see has an ending at some stage. So we're going through endings all the time. And this is just a planned and managed ending. And I guess the thinking is pretty similar to all endings. We don't want to be ripping. the carpet from under somebody's feet. We don't want them to feel that they didn't know, that they didn't have a choice, that they don't feel held as that ending comes. So we'll focus just for a moment on the planned endings. And what you shared, Rory, is absolute gold when you spoke about how you wound up your practice. And you said something at the beginning. It was your first sentence. And this, I think, is something that is sometimes missed. So you said... The first thing I did was I stopped inquiries coming through from my website and from my professional profiles. And that's an important one because we think of endings, think of closing down. We might concentrate on our client load. And of course, we need to go there in a moment. But what you want to do is stop the inquiries. And even because we don't want to be then constantly going to an inquiry and go, oh, no, I'm stepping out of practice. Oh, no, I'm not available. Oh, no, I can't see you. Because that's somebody reaching out that has a need. And that's, you know, they want to be held as well. So closing that down on your website, you can say, I'm no longer taking clients if you need to leave your website up for some reason. And, of course, with your directory listings, every... directory whether it be ethical body or a paid listing you can log in you can make edits to that and you turn it off and have a think where you might you where your information might be out in the world because it's surprising you know we think about uh when we set up in practice we start relationships and maybe we've got some people that refer into us and it's out of sight out of mind And you can be surprised by an inquiry coming in from something that you'd forgotten about. So have a think about all of the routes into your practice and close those down first. I love that you mentioned supervision. I think this is a great thing to take to supervision and to speak about it in depth. Get your supervisor and yourself going over all the different... areas of winding down the practice. And there's a lot to it. There's the bookkeeping side. There's the taxation side. If you're a registered business, do you close that down? There's a lot to consider that is not, it doesn't show itself at first glance because I think, Rory, our natural place to go. is we go to our clients and wanting to hold those and a lot of the focus can be on the clients and we can forget about the housekeeping as it were rory Speaker 2 (12:28) absolutely and i i just want to make a a couple of observations about closing down what i did from memory was i put on my website not taking any more clients i didn't shut my website down because it struck me that if my if my client had seen my website disappear, that might have caused a bit of anxiety because we know that clients look you up. We know that in between sessions, they may use your website or your listing as a transitional object. And by a transitional object, I mean something to give them comfort. You know, they're having a difficult time. They're not seeing you for another few days. They might just click on your website or click on your profile. Because, you know, that's the way counseling relationships sometimes work. So I didn't just switch everything off because can you imagine the client seeing that and thinking, well, why is he switching everything off? Is he going to just turn me off? Is he going to switch me off? Especially with clients who may have issues with attachment. Let's not forget that. So what I did was. I put not taking any clients on at the moment. And people could read into that what they want. It could be that I've got a full client load or that I might not be taking any more clients. It's very neutral and it's not scary. It's not frightening for existing clients. And then I broached the topic with my client and I said I was retiring from clinical practice. Didn't say I was retiring from work. I said I'm retiring from clinical practice. And I had a long discussion with my supervisor about what happens if the client quizzes you. Are you all right? Are you ill? And I had all those questions. They were never asked, to be fair. But to make sure that I didn't leave the client worrying about me. Clients don't come to worry about the therapist. Clients come to look at their own material. So I had all that in my mind before. I actually started the process of saying to the client, after the session, just before we finish, just got something to share with you. I will be retiring in, and I gave the date, which was, and I gave it six months. I thought six months was responsible. And I said, you know, maybe if you want to speak about this at our next session, we can, but I just thought I'd. I'd tell you. So I didn't take the client's time up with my own stuff. And I gave the client an opportunity to go away and think about it and come back and chat. And as it happened, it was lovely. You know, the client said, oh, yeah, okay, I understand that. And I did, at regular intervals, just gently remind the client that, you know, as we're headed towards what would be an ending for... for the client and an ending for me. It was two endings really. And also, I think we need to speak about, you know, maintaining that clinical. Well, we talked about it in the last episode, but that's really, really important because you have to hold records for a number of years. You have things like data protection legislation that you need to navigate round. And also you need to work collaboratively. This is something you're going to hear a lot about in discussions going forward from November, collaborative working, involving people in decisions, affecting the work where it's possible, and evidence how collaboration took place. So if there was ever a complaint... You know, I had all this written down. What I did, I did in my notes, I did in my correspondence with my clients. So everything was clear, transparent and showed an area of collaboration. It wasn't non-negotiable. I wasn't going to stay on in practice. But where I could, I kept the clients informed. Very important. Speaker 4 (16:42) That's absolute gold. You know, we've got a handout that you can download on this and it goes through the different steps. So the first thing that we've discussed today is planning. the closure. And we've got a number of tick boxes that you can tick there. And of course, put your own thoughts in there as well. Then the next stage, that's communicating that and managing it and managing that therapeutic ending, speaking to your clients. And then, as you've said, Rory, there's the record keeping because we've got to protect confidentiality. We're holding data. We're holding the records of these clients. And we need to hold that for a certain amount of time. And a consideration, might be that you may have ongoing expenses when you close your practice. So if you're storing your data somewhere in a note-taking app, for example, you might be saying, you know what, I'm going to keep that there and keep it protected for the time until deletion. And of course, there might be a cost associated with that as well. And on that same area, think about contact your insurer. because you want to have a chat with your insurer. Okay, I'm not in practice anymore. I don't need insurance anymore. Well, the thing is, you know, if something comes up. it may come up from an ex-client, somebody that you saw