Life lesson 13th March 2017
Becky Pollard is the Clinical Lead and Safeguarding Lead at Beacon, a brilliant charity offering Counselling to Children Young People and Adults in the Stockport area. She currently also supervises counsellors who work with Children and Young People and Adults.
There are 55 counsellors and Becky’s job is to supervise 20 of them. Everybody is supported as it can sometimes be a hard day if you are listening to people’s problems.
To be a counsellor you have to understand how other people feel – not how you feel. Becky has to step into the person’s shoes to help with how they feel. She doesn’t ask her patients questions. She waits for them to tell her why they are there to see her. Sometimes people want to talk and sometimes they don’t; if they don’t, she advises them to come back when they are ready.
All Becky’s work is confidential unless she is dealing with children or young adults. She counsels children and young adults through play and expressing their feelings through art.
Becky works about 30 hours a week. She does private counselling from home and works 9-5 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes it can be a lot later as she has group sessions.
When she was younger she wanted to be an actress, a journalist and a politician. She went to drama school but didn’t really like it. She did journalism and studied politics at University but didn’t pursue any of these and instead joined the police force! She was a policewoman for 7 years and loved the job, finding it very exciting.
She later decided to do a course on counselling and loved it so she did two and a half years’ training.
Becky loves cooking and if she couldn’t be a counsellor, she’d love to be a chef in her own restaurant only working three days a week. She loves cooking.
Her favourite part of the job is when the counselling is coming to an end and the patient feels much better than they did. They feel happier and their problems are sorted out.
What inspired you? Learning to be respectful of other people’s feelings, not judging people and helping people feel great.
Have you ever not been able to help someone? Yes. Sometimes people may have been told to have counselling and they are not ready or they just don’t want it.
Becky also telephone supports all 55 counsellors in safeguarding.
One of Becky’s quotes for being a counsellor was ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are’.
Becky’s Tom is coming to the end of his Y6 time at Buxworth and we will miss him and his family very much.