What is a Lay Counselor?
Lay counselors are trained helpers who do not have a traditional mental health education, master’s degrees, or licenses but can provide crucial support, comfort, and care to patients or clients who are suffering.
Where do Lay Counselors Work?
Lay counselors can work in any health or social care setting, such as primary care or mental health organizations.
Why Lay Counselor Training?
Mental Health
We are in a mental health crisis in this country, with children, adolescents and adults with high levels of need
Need
We do not have enough licensed mental health therapists to meet the current need
Support
There is good evidence that Lay Counselors can provide comparable services to licensed therapists
What if your staff could get 65 hours of deep,
transformational learning to be a lay counselor?
When Should Your Organization Use Lay Counselors?
If your organization has long wait lists for patients, clients or students to see behavioral health clinicians...
If your patients, clients or students experience long wait times before a first BH appointment…
If you’ve had continuous open BH clinician positions that you can’t fill…
If you can’t find bilingual or bicultural BH clinicians….
Benefits of Having Lay Counselors In Your Organization
Provide Timely Care
Get your patients, clients, or students the care they need in a safe and timely manner
Enrich Your Team
Enrich and elevate your most dedicated, skillful employees
Additional Counseling Skills
Spread core behavioral health counseling skills throughout your organization
Our Course Modules:
In the Lay Counselor Academy your staff will learn the following:
- CBT and Behavioral Activation
- Motivational Interviewing
- Person-Centered Approaches
- Strengths-based supportive counseling
- Mindfulness and self-compassion practices
- Anti-racist counseling practices
- Awareness of biases and how to mitigate
- Developing and maintaining the Therapeutic Alliance
- Staying in Unconditional Positive Regard
- Anxiety and how to help
- Depression and how to help
- Substance use and how to help
- Relationship problems and how to help
- Trauma and how to help
- Boundaries and Ethics
- Optimizing clinical supervision
- Effective use of lived experience
- Initiation and termination of course of counseling
- Mandated reporting
- Suicide risk assessment and intervention