Career as a Child Counselor

Career as a Child Counselor

Overview

A child counselor provides counseling on a variety of child problems and disorders, such as relationship issues, depression due to various issues like amity issues, family problems, exam-related anxiety, and learning difficulties such as dyslexia. Often these counselors need to counsel parents too, to address the root cause of a problem.

A child counselor can help children become more mentally and emotionally stable, which can help them become healthier and happier adults.


A child counselor can get a job in hospitals, health centers, schools, children's homes, and juvenile detention centers. They can work independently also depending on their experience. 

In hospitals and health centers, a child counselor treats a number of mental and emotional disorders and illnesses. In schools, they help children in overcoming education-related issues.

Duties of a child counselor:

  • Identify the problem by using different methods like communication, play therapy etc.
  • Communicating to the parents to identify the root cause of the problem
  • They gathered information through their observations, interviews, surveys, and other methods used
  • Offer long term counselling for those patients suffering from mental health disorders
  • Write reports, articles, research theory, and to share collected data
  • Studies the behavior and brain functions

Eligibility

A master's degree in psychology is a must to become a child counselor. If you go for a Ph.D. or Doctoral Work, it will be great for your career growth.

How to be there?

Career path for the aspirants:
  • It's good if you start at 10+2 level with science (physics, chemistry, biology) with psychology but it's not necessary. You can go for any subject at +2 levels.
  • Earn a bachelor's degree in psychology from reputed institutions.
  • Earn a master's degree in psychology from reputed institutions.
  • For better career prospects, you must do MPhil/PhD.

Skills Required

A child counsellor must have:
  • Excellent communication skills, especially listening
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Empathy
  • Open mindedness and objectivity to deal with the child neutrally
  • Ability to win trust to establish rapport with the client
  • Sensitive and non-intrusive
  • A strong sense of ethics

Salary

The earning of a child counselor depends on specialty, location, and popularity oneself. A beginner can easily get between Rs. 2 to 3 lakh. Experience and location have a moderate effect on income for this job.

Career Scope

There are endless opportunities available in this field. They can get jobs in various universities, colleges & schools, hospitals, clinics, government agencies, etc. In India, it is still a growing sector, because the jobs are huge in metro cities but still the small cities and the villages are far from these services.

Pros and Cons

Positive
  • Growing demand
  • Great joy in seeing a depressed soul walk out happy
Negative
  • Job options still limited to big cities
  • Not good initial salary

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