IICP College provides a centre of academic and professional excellence in counselling and psychotherapy education. It is an engaging, dynamic and supportive college in which to study. IICP prides itself on its ethos of student support, ensuring that learners are guided and supported through the programme. The professional programmes, from certificate to masters, reflect the core ethos. Each stage of the programme offers training based on models of psychotherapy that promote respect, personal responsibility, understanding and flexibility. Carl Rogers’ model of Person Centred Counselling (in which respect for the client is paramount) and Dr William Glasser’s empowerment model of Choice Theory are integrated with Multicultural Counselling, which recognises the diversity that exists between social and economic groups as well as between ethnic groups.

Such diversity is reflected in the cohort of students who attend and graduate from the programme. Both the personal and professional development of students are held within a pluralistic framework. In other words, through their personal and professional journeys students are encouraged to become competent counsellors who facilitate a client’s therapeutic process according to what fits for the client as opposed to offering a one-size-fits-all approach.

IICP has dual validation: professional recognition from IACP, the largest professional counselling and psychotherapy body in Ireland; and academic validation from QQI. IICP are also proud to be a member of HECA (Higher Education Colleges Association).

Our four-year BA (Hons) in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy offers a seamless transition from theory to practice, graduates of this programme are perfectly placed to pursue an enriching and fulfilling career as a therapist in the helping professions. IICP operate a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) Policy whereby, under certain conditions, learners can gain access to the BA (Hons) programme at an advanced stage.

At IICP, we desire to contribute a community dimension to the development of mental health care and counselling through the use of a practical, cutting-edge and integrative model, which forms the basis for this pioneering and innovative programme. We consider that training in counselling and psychotherapy is an inter-disciplinary endeavour, a combination of art and science to include, amongst others, the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology. IICP’s core philosophical ethos, which offers a theoretical framework encompassing humanistic-existential, cognitive-behavioural and multicultural psychotherapeutic models, is a contemporary integrative framework.

This unique approach offers a broad structure to professionals who are dealing with a diverse range of clients and presenting problems. IICP offer a unique learner-centred environment. At the heart of the training provided in IICP lies the belief that people are experts in the story of their own lives. The therapeutic process can encourage the client to make effective change in relation to life direction and the ensuing process of decision making. IICP holds that it is not enough to simply teach the skills of counselling and psychotherapy. Learners are given the space to learn, practice and be supported as they develop for themselves a style and model of counselling which is both personal and effective.

With assigned programme leaders and assistant programme leaders for each year, learners are supported and guided through each stage of the programme. Everything we teach is linked to practice. For Skills Modules, we ensure that there are 5-6 lecturers or teaching assistants in the class to offer ongoing feedback on clinical skills. IICP has strong clinical placement links in an on-site counselling agency, Village Counselling Service. This ensures learners do not have to find their own placement and enables them to commence their clinical work in a safe, supportive environment. We also have links with agencies around the country, where learners can do their placement closer to home.

Following on from our BA (Hons), our students can progress to our Masters in Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy which was developed in conjunction with visiting professor, John McLeod, PhD, FBACP. Likewise, there is the progression route of a Masters in Integrative Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, for those who wish to specialise in this area.

Our Master of Arts in Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy offers a pluralistic perspective is an integrative approach to Counselling and Psychotherapy that embraces and considers multiple causes and responses to psychological distress. The aim of the programme is to equip practitioners with an up-to-date, cutting edge training to meet the needs of contemporary society. It also aims to identify and develop leadership and collaborative qualities in those involved in therapeutic practice. With a strong research focus, graduates from this programme will have the necessary knowledge, skills and competence to act as research-practitioners.

The programme aims to enable graduates to analyse their own practice and the profession as a whole. We strive to facilitate learners in the creation of evidence-based solutions to the current problems they face as individual practitioners and dilemmas that exist within the profession. As pluralism is the unifying theme in the programme, the programme will foster a spirit of enquiry where learners will engage in the pursuit of multiple truths, drawing from diverse disciples, approaches and orientations.