Interview with Clive Jones

Dr. Clive Jones is the Institute’s Education Manager and largely responsible for the ongoing quality of AIPC training programs. His qualifications include a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern Queensland in 1999, undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in Psychology and Education, and also a Diploma of Professional Counselling through AIPC.

Hi Clive! Thank you for joining us. To start this interview, can you explain a bit more about your role as the Education Manager at the Institute?

To put it in a mission statement, I see my role as quality-controlling the educational product of the Institute. Ultimately, I am succeeding in my mission if every aspect of the educational experience of our students is one of high quality.

Generally, this is achieved through ensuring that the educational experience of students enrolled in either the Diploma, Vocational Graduate qualifications and/or Bachelor Degree are world-class.

Practically, this is achieved through the hard work of a great national education team that currently stands at around 77 staff members across Australia and includes seminar/workshop presenters, lecturers, private assessors and tutors, workbook and assignment markers, course and program writers, online and phone-in education advisors and a range of other education staff based around Australia directly involved in helping to provide high quality education to our students.

I am doing a lot of hands-on writing for our new degree at the moment. So while I manage the broader educational-based processes of the Institute I am also a little more hands-on with the new degree program at this point in time.

This means working very closely with our degree lecturers in planning residential schools and practice placements for our students, along with writing a large part of the study materials for the degree as we introduce new subjects for the first time each semester for the next 3 years (between 2008-2010).

You are certainly involved in a lot of tasks! With variety being a prominent quality of your work, what would you nominate as the most exciting or rewarding aspect of your job?

It is exciting to play a part in helping students realise their ambitions of becoming a counsellor. I know it can sound a little corny but it is really very exciting to be involved in helping to ensure that Australia’s largest provider of counsellor education is of the highest standard possible in the educational experience offered to students.

I am very passionate about the counselling profession as a practitioner, academic and educator. So it’s great to be involved with a team of professionals who share my passion in this. 

Counselling has grown considerably in the past, and the current demand for counsellors continues to increase across the country. In your opinion, how does this growth affect the broad delivery of mental health support?

I’ll answer this question from a broad industry perspective. Unfortunately, while the theories and skills of counselling are at the heart of any authentic and credible form of mental health care, there has been a political wrestle between different mental health associations over the ownership of counselling and psychotherapy as a professional entity.

What this political wrestle ignores is that whether someone is a social worker, psychologist, counsellor, occupational therapist, or any other allied professional dealing with mental health issues, all use the same skills and knowledge found within counselling and psychotherapy to work effectively with clients. While each professional mental health care body has a political bandwagon to push, in reality there is no one professional body that holds any special or unique solution to deal with mental health issues. 

Ultimately what this means is that whether a psychologist, social worker or counsellor, all of these professions are far more similar than different and all draw from the very same pool of counselling and psychotherapeutic knowledge, theory and strategy of approach when being trained to deal with mental health issues.

However, rather than connecting in, working together and acknowledging the common ground of training and skill mix that psychologists, social workers, counsellors and other mental health care service professionals have, there is an uncooperative jostling for recognition between each professional group to be seen as the most relevant and appropriate professional entity for optimum health care. 

This is very unfortunate because it means that there are biases that develop in the system from an air of competitiveness rather than a more balanced approach from a spirit of cooperation. Ultimately this means, rather than working together in the commonality of knowledge and skill mix to help in bettering the mental health and wellbeing of the nation, there is a competitiveness that results in some professional associations emulating a sense of elitism.  

Understanding the difficulties associated with this political mindfield, Counselling in Australia is stepping up to the plate well with the goal of confirming its place as a major body of mental health care professionals.

The Australian Counseling Association (ACA) and the Psychotherapy and Counseling Federation of Australia (PACFA) are two organisations that are in the engine room of developments in this area.

Speaking up for the future of counselling as a unique profession, they are working to forge a shared place with other mental health care professionals in being acknowledged as key stakeholders in the domain of mental health care provision. 

You have extensive experience working as a Life Coach, particularly with high performance elite sport athletes. Your portfolio includes a spiel in the World Triathlon Championships in France as an athlete, and over 10 years of experience in providing services to athletes, coaches and their families. How much benefit do you think coaching skills and strategies can offer to Counselling practice? 

Coaching skills are about encouraging the client to reach their optimum potential. It’s about helping them find ways to develop into the person they are meant to be and made to be.

Paraphrasing the words of Fritz Perls, “an eagle doesn’t ever want to be an elephant and an elephant never wants to be an eagle!” They are at their best when they choose to be who they are meant to be and live their life in the full context of who they are meant to be. It would be a sad state of affairs for the elephant if he tried to fly over mountain tops (haha). 

It’s this goal of discovering self and making choices in the context of self discovery and self development that the areas of coaching and counselling cross over very specifically. Both coaching and counselling are about helping the client discover who they really are, what they would like to get out of life and how they really need to go about making it happen in a way that is personally fulfilling and mutually enriching in the context of close relationships.

So many clients will finish up their counselling and coaching journeys in the same place, with a better understanding of who they are, what they want out of life and how they need to go about making it happen in a healthy and constructive way. So without any doubt there are many coaching skills that can be directly applied to the counselling process effectively.

Click here to learn more about Clive, or visit our Support Team category.

Click here to watch Clive’s video overview of the Institute’s Diploma of Professional Counselling.

One Response to “Interview with Clive Jones”

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1. Eugene says:

   October 22, 2008 at 12:29 am

   looking forward for more information about this. thanks for sharing. Eugene

   Reply