Registered Student Counsellor: Health and Wellness (P10) at Sol Plaatje University

Minimum Requirements

• Professional bachelor’s degree in psychology, at NQF8 level.
• Bachelor Honours degree or the equivalent to the BPsych degree that incorporates an approved 6-month or 720-hour face-to-face practicum.
• Active registration and compliance with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) as a Registered Counsellor
• Driver’s license
• Willingness to work outside normal working hours.
• A minimum of at least 2 years of relevant work experience preferably in an educational field.

Skills:

• Proficiency in MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook)
• Maintenance of high professional and ethical standards.
• Ability to work within a multi-disciplinary team.
• Ability to remain calm and level-headed in challenging situations.
• Emotional Intelligence.
• High level of interpersonal skills.
• A strong work ethic.

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of the higher education sector and clear knowledge and understanding of student centricity, student background and context.

Duties and responsibilities 

• Crisis intervention
• Provide counselling that focuses on acute or critical situations (e.g. victims or witnesses of crime or violence, accident victims, emergency emotional containment)
• Ecosystem
• Provide a dynamic interaction for individual students and group sessions and the broader student community.
• Fundamental understanding of psychopathology
• Understanding psychopathology for the purposes of screening.
• Understanding that Registered Counsellors act as a consultant at the primary curative/ preventative level across the full scope of psychology. This intervention requires the application of concrete and predetermined decision-making rules.
• Being the first line of student-based psychological support.

Primary Intervention

• Providing preventative and developmental counselling services and interventions on all systems levels.
• Identifying and addressing causes of problems or containing expressed emotion.
• Assist in keeping records in the state as prescribed by the Professional Board for Psychology and the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
• Develop activities designed to ameliorate stressors.
• Provide psycho-education and mental health promotion: A planned, proactive transfer of information designed to promote and enhance psychosocial well-being for individuals, families, groups and communities.

Research and Education Awareness.

• Provide psycho-education and mental health promotion that addresses relevant issues in student community contexts.
• A planned, proactive transfer of information designed to promote and enhance psychosocial well-being for individual students, groups, and the entire student community.
• Use quantitative and qualitative data to inform decision-making and scholar support strategies.
• Assist in coordinating school and community outreach activities

Psychological counselling intervention

• Provide screening, assessments, psychological education and training and referral for students.
• Develop and monitor the psychometric work of the Interns/Peer Educators/Wellness Warriors at the Centre.
• Do an investigation of possible disruption to a client’s psychological well-being and early identification of mental health challenges.
• Identify symptoms or reasons for referrals to professionals within the healthcare system.
• Provide counselling that assists to alleviating traumatic responses and/or assists clients to adjust to altered circumstances.
• Maintain accurate and organised case files, including process notes and progress reports for each student, ensuring compliance with confidentiality and data protection regulations

Professional Development and Collaboration

• Implement behavior management policies and procedures that cultivate a strong and positive student culture.
• Implement a work readiness programme for all final-year students in collaboration with Career Services Unit.
• Collaborate with Staff Counselling officers to offer mentoring and guidance to lecturers and staff to enhance their professional growth, providing opportunities for skill development and creating a culture of continuous learning.
• Building professional networks with other mental health professionals such as Psychologists, Psychometrists, and even doctors is important in referring clients appropriately.