Scope of practice
A HICS Accredited Counsellor provides counselling: a purposeful, evidence-informed professional relationship in which a trained practitioner works alongside a person, applying counselling skills and knowledge to support their wellbeing, deepen their self-understanding, and strengthen their capacity to navigate personal, emotional and relational challenges. They do not diagnose, do not treat mental illness, do not provide psychotherapy, and do not practise unsupervised. Where a client’s needs go beyond this scope, the member has a positive duty to refer, not merely permission to.
How to read this scope
HICS is a voluntary, non-statutory body. It licenses nobody, and holding a HICS designation confers no legal authority. What this document does is bind our members: a member who works outside this scope is in breach of the Code of Professional Conduct and is subject to the complaints and disciplinary process.
The common core
Every member holding the HAC designation or above has been assessed as competent in all of the following. There are no exceptions and no qualifications to this list. If a member holds a HICS designation, they hold this competence.
01
Structured, goal-directed counselling on the ordinary difficulties of life: relationships, work, transitions, stress, self-esteem, decision-making, life direction. Grounded in an understanding of human development and attachment.
02
Supporting an adult through loss, including anticipatory grief and the course of bereavement.
03
Understanding how trauma affects a person and adapting practice accordingly: stabilisation, grounding, psychoeducation about trauma responses, and safe containment, including with adult survivors of childhood abuse.
This is support and stabilisation. It is not trauma processing, which requires the trauma counselling field of practice. A member who does not hold that field does not invite a client to recount or work through traumatic material.
04
Recognising acute risk to the client or to others, responding safely in the moment, and escalating immediately to an appropriately qualified professional or emergency service. A member may use a structured screening tool and basic safety planning to judge how urgently to escalate.
That screening is to decide how urgently to escalate, not a clinical risk assessment, and never a reason to keep the risk rather than pass it on.
05
Every member is trained to recognise the presentations of mental illness and psychological difficulty that fall outside counselling, and to refer appropriately.
Members are trained to recognise. They are not trained, and are not permitted, to diagnose. Recognition exists to trigger a referral, never to produce a conclusion about what a client has.
06
Explaining how emotional difficulty works and what helps, across mental health and everyday wellbeing, with topics such as stress, coping, sleep, boundaries and communication. Individually, or in structured psychoeducational and support groups.
This is facilitation, not group therapy.
07
Every member’s training covers work with children and adolescents, couples, and substance use at a foundational level. This equips them to recognise what is presenting, respond safely at first contact, and refer to a competent practitioner.
Ongoing counselling practice in these domains requires the corresponding field of practice.
08
Every member is trained to monitor their own fitness to practise and to recognise vicarious trauma, and is required to act on what they notice, to ensure their own strain is never carried into a client’s care.
09
Identifying when a client’s needs exceed this scope, explaining that to the client without alarm or judgement, and making a warm, documented referral to a suitable professional. Referral is assessed as a competence in its own right.
Fields of practice
A field of practice is additional competence in a specific area, held over and above the common core every member already carries. It answers one question: what may this member work with on an ongoing basis? Each field requires training beyond the entry requirement, and a member holds one only if their training covered it and HICS has verified and recorded it. Fields are shown against the member’s name in the directory, so they are checkable rather than claimed. Most members might hold more than one.
Ongoing counselling with clients under 18, subject to additional consent, child-protection and supervision requirements.
Supervision of this work must be provided by a supervisor HICS has authorised in child and adolescent work.
Ongoing counselling with two adults on their relationship.
Ongoing supportive counselling alongside, or as a bridge to, appropriate treatment.
Not detoxification, not medical management, and not a substitute for clinical addiction treatment.
Structured work with traumatic material, including processing, beyond the stabilisation and support permitted in the common core.
Advanced practice
A field of practice adds competence over and above the core; advanced practice adds depth over and above the field, together with a reserved title. The difference between the two is evidence: a field records that a member was trained in an area, advanced practice that they have demonstrated competence in it. That is why only advanced practice carries a title.
Field of practice
Advanced practice
Question answered
What populations and modalities may this member work with?
How deeply, and under what title?
Evidence required
Training completed and verified.
Advanced training, assessed competence, and supervised practice in that field.
Depth permitted
Foundational work within the domain.
Advanced-level work within the domain.
Title
Descriptive only: “trauma-informed”, “works with adolescents”.
The reserved title, for example Trauma Counsellor.
Ongoing obligation
Covered by the normal annual CPD requirement.
Field-specific CPD required to maintain it. Advanced practice lapses without it.
Advanced practice is available from the Accredited Counsellor designation upward and carries no tenure requirement, because seniority in general practice does not evidence competence in a particular field. What it requires instead is evidence in the field itself:
A member may enter an advanced practice programme directly from the Accredited Counsellor designation; they do not need to hold the field of practice first. The programme includes the field-level training, and the field is recorded on completion, not held back while the remaining advanced practice requirements are met.
Advanced-level practice in trauma, at a depth beyond the structured processing permitted by the field alone.
Reserved title: Trauma Counsellor
Read the outcomesAdvanced-level practice using play as the primary medium of the work with children and adolescents.
Reserved title: Play-Based Intervention Counsellor
Read the outcomesIt is a claim about current competence, not a milestone reached once. A member must maintain field-specific CPD to retain it. If they do not, advanced practice lapses and the reserved title must cease to be used.
Core, field, advanced practice
These are levels of depth within a single high-risk competence domain, not a measure of the whole member. Not holding a field does not shut a member out of a domain: they may recognise, respond safely at first contact, and refer, rather than take the person on for ongoing work.
The absolute limitations
This list is absolute: it applies to every member at every level, without exception. A HICS counsellor does not diagnose, provide psychotherapy, prescribe or advise on medication, administer psychometric tests, use a protected title, or practise without supervision. These are among the ten absolute limits, which are published in full on the limitations page.
A professional body that wants to appear important expands its claims. The more useful thing is to be exact about where our members’ competence ends: it tells a client whether to trust someone, another professional whether to refer, and an employer what a role can contain.
Where responsibility sits
Professional and ethical responsibility for a client rests with the member at all times. Supervision informs the member’s judgement; it does not transfer responsibility. A member who acts, or fails to act, because a supervisor advised it remains fully accountable under the Code of Professional Conduct.
A supervisor is accountable for the quality of the supervision they provide, not for the practice of the member they supervise. A supervisor’s confirmation at annual renewal confirms that supervision took place. It is not a warranty of the member’s competence or conduct.
The duty to refer
A member must refer, and must do so promptly, where a client presents with:
Referral is not a discharge of responsibility. The member remains responsible for making the referral safely: explaining it to the client, providing a suitable referral option rather than a list, documenting it, and, where the client consents, following up. Members maintain access to a referral directory of HPCSA-registered professionals and other services.
Ongoing obligations
Working within the scope is not the whole of what membership requires. A member practising under a HICS designation must also:
Humanitas Independent Counselling Society membership designation. Not a statutory registration.
Professional indemnity insurance is strongly recommended for every practising member. HICS does not fund it and cannot require members to purchase it.