Admission Requirements

College Eligibility

• Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) or equivalent; OR
• Academic and Career Entrance (ACE) Certificate; OR
• General Educational Development (GED); OR
• Mature Student status (19 years of age or older and without a high school diploma at the start of the program).

Call the Admissions Office at 1 (800) 267-2577 for more details. Academic prerequisites for this program may be obtained free of charge through Academic Upgrading.

Application Process
Program intake – Apply to this program by visiting our Registration page. If you are entering into this program as a mature student please attach your resume when submitting your registration information online.

Courses

Semester 1
Study Skills Strategies
Crisis Management
Conflict Resolution
Communication Strategies
Writing Reports and Proposals
Emotional Intelligence

Semester 2
Mental Health Across the Lifespan
Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Health
Psychological Assessment and Research Methods
Psychological Factors Affecting Medical Conditions
Recovery Strategies for Mental Health
Prevention and Mental Health Promotion in the Community
Mental Health and the Law in Canada

Semester 3
Introduction to Professional Counselling
Stages and Skills of Counselling
Assessing Client Needs
Defining Strategies and Selecting Interventions
Termination and Follow-Up
Stress Management
Critical Thinking

Every attempt is made to ensure the accuracy of information provided on our website. The College reserves the right to modify any course, program, curriculum, fee, timetable, or campus location at any time.

Register for this course.

Course Descriptions

Semester 1
Study Skills Strategies
This course will enable students to assess their current study skills and plan for improvement. Students will practice time-management techniques for successful studying. Students will learn to develop powerful reading skills and practice memory techniques to enhance ability to learn and improve test performance. This course will also help students to develop specific study skills for mathematics and related subjects and implement an action plan to improve them.

Crisis Management
This course on crisis management offers students the basics in identifying, preventing, and controlling crisis situations. Crisis management basics, from preparation to training and compliance are discussed, as are various stages of a crisis, and the need to establish a crisis management team. Clearly identifying the roles and functions of each crisis management team member is essential for the ultimate success of contingency planning, which is also discussed.

Conflict Resolution
In this course students will learn how to recognize how their own attitudes and actions impact others, effective techniques for dealing with difficult people, strategies for dealing with anger, and how to cope with the difficult people and situations that we will inevitably encounter in our everyday lives.

Communication Strategies
This course will enable students to identify common communication problems and develop skills to ask questions. Students will learn what their non-verbal messages are saying and develop skills in listening actively and empathetically to others. Upon completion of this course students should have an enhanced ability to handle difficult situations and communicate assertively.

Writing Reports and Proposals
In this course students will learn four stages of report writing, and nine tips for effective writing that will help them create materials that are engaging, understandable, and most important, get read. In addition, students will learn about using persuasive language to write effective proposals.

Emotional Intelligence
This course teaches essential emotional intelligence skills to students, who learn the connections between physical and emotional health; the range of emotions, and how to manage them; how to validate emotion in others; and how to discuss emotions.

Semester 2
Mental Health Across the Lifespan
This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts related to mental health and mental illness. It takes a lifespan perspective moving from mental health issues that occur from birth to death. As well as introducing what abnormal behavior is, how it is assessed and classified through the appropriate diagnostic tools.

Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Health
This course will provide students with an overview of the theoretical perspectives that the social work profession has made to various social and psychological problems.

Psychological Assessment and Research Methods
This course is an introduction to the principals, methods, and purposes of intentional interviewing as applied to human service counselling. Students will learn how to achieve a helping relationship while practicing observational and listening skills and will learn how to influence and structure an effective interview. This course also utilizes experiential learning to focus on the purposes, principles, and methods of effective interviewing as applied to children, adolescents, adults, older adults, and families. A solution-focused approach is introduced and practised. This course will enable students to understand and appreciate the relevance of research findings to their daily work with clients. Students will learn to participate in evaluation of research findings in the field of human services. Students will examine and explore research related to the effectiveness of counseling methods

Recovery Strategies for Mental Health
This course is an introduction to treatment approaches and services for substance abuse and to the basic and intermediate skills necessary to provide such treatment. The roles of counsellor and client are discussed and basic/intermediate counselling skills as they apply to screening, intake, assessment, treatment planning, referral, and case management are explored.

Prevention and Mental Health Promotion in the Community
This course provides advanced development of counsellor skills that focus on relapse prevention, wellness and recovery planning for people with substance abuse and /or mental health issues. Psychotherapeutic and pharmacological approaches to relapse prevention are examined. Common triggers and other factors that contribute to relapse are discussed. Strategies for assisting the recovering client in coping with common pitfalls are explored. Also discussed are ways to help clients identify and harness their personal strengths and
resources to sustain recovery. Prevention and health promotion strategies for substance abuse and mental illness are discussed.

Mental Health and the Law in Canada
A review of the Canadian legal system as it affects human service with particular emphasis on statutes,
procedures, and tribunals directly affecting clients of social agencies.

Semester 3
Introduction to Professional Counselling
In this course, we introduce a number of concepts and conditions that are fundamental to the counseling process. In so doing, we provide a structure for the remainder of the book. Counseling must be viewed within a context. The factors that contribute to that context include philosophy, current theoretical premises, and culture— in other words, the social milieu. That milieu changes as a society changes. And, of course, it changes when one moves from one society or culture to another. In addition, we address helper qualities that are universal, crossing cultures and time. Our ultimate objective is to help you, the student, begin to identify yourself within these parameters and to do some introspection regarding how your personal qualities match those of the professional counselor.

Stages and Skills of Counselling
The overall objective of this course is to present the structure of the counseling process and how that structure helps you determine what the counselor should be doing. The beginning point of counseling is a time when you and your client must decide, both independently and mutually, whether this particular pairing of persons and personalities offers the potential for growth and change. Beyond that decision, you must reach agreement on what the problem is; how counseling might assist in changing problematic circumstances; what counseling activities would help produce that change; and, finally, when the helping effort should conclude. This course examines this process from the client’s perspective, which will be different from your own.

The second part of this course examines the first of the five stages in the counseling process: establishing rapport and a positive therapeutic relationship. Counselor qualities and behaviors and cliequalities and input that are associated with therapeutic relationships are discussed. The increased likelihood that counseling will be a multicultural experience is recognized as an important factor in forming the relationship. This course addresses relationship issues that will likely be part of that multicultural counseling experience, including the counselor’s responsibility for the client’s cultural identity and sensitivity as well as his or her own.

Assessing Client Needs
Students will examine the process by which the counselor and client can work collaboratively to define what that desirable outcome might or will be. Students will also examine the first of the five stages in the counseling process: establishing rapport and a positive therapeutic relationship. Counselor qualities and behaviors and clienqualities and input that are associated with therapeutic relationships are discussed. The increased likelihood that counseling will be a multicultural experience is recognized as an important factor in forming the relationship. This course addresses relationship issues that will likely be part of that multicultural counseling experience, including the counselor’s responsibility for the client’s cultural identity and sensitivity as well as his or her own.

Defining Strategies and Selecting Interventions
In this course, we examine the process by which counselors can assess the client’s presenting problems. That process involves the collection of information relevant to problem definition, conceptualization of that information into a cogent picture of the client in his or her world, and consideration of client resources. Cultural factors that affect client perceptions of their world and counselor perceptions of client problems are introduced. Clinical assessment in counseling may occur at an in- take interview prior to assignment to a counselor. Or it may occur during the assigned counselor’s sessions with the client. When it occurs prior to counselor assignment, it typically includes paper- and- pencil assessment instruments in addition to information gathering in the interview( s).

There are two approaches to clinical assessment: the psych diagnostic method and the psychometric method. In this course, we shall examine the psych diagnostic approach, which has as its purpose the evaluation of client problems and contextual conditions in order to determine what type of counseling is needed, what types of interventions should be used, and how counseling is likely to progress.

Termination and Follow-Up
Termination, the fifth and final stage of counseling, is the transition from assisted functioning to counseling- free functioning by the client. In this course, we discuss the dynamics that affect this transition, the counselor’s role and responsibilities in seeing that this transition occurs, and the occasional necessity to make client referrals to other mental health professionals. It is important to keep in mind through each of the counseling stages that the ultimate goals of any counseling relationship are success and termination. How this is accomplished is the focus of this course.

Stess Management
Whether participants are looking for appropriate initiatives to apply from a corporate perspective, or as individuals, stress is an unavoidable reality that can be positively impactful. Students will learn the signs of chronic stress overload, identifying actions that add to people’s stress levels, and how to implement action to reduce unhealthy stress.

Critical Thinking
This course provides an introduction to critical thinking, informal logic, and a small amount of formal logic. Its purpose is to provide you with the basic tools of analytical reasoning, which will give students a distinctive edge in a wide variety of careers and courses of study. The course touches upon a wide range of reasoning skills, from verbal argument analysis to formal logic, visual and statistical reasoning, scientific methodology, and creative thinking. Mastering these skills will help you become a more perceptive reader and listener, a more persuasive writer and presenter, and a more effective researcher.

Fees & Expenses

Fees Apply for this Academic Year.

• Registration: $100.00
• Textbooks: $1025.00
• Shipping: $61.00
• Tuition: $3,999.00

Total Tuition & Fees: $5,185.00