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Shalan, Sarah (2025) How do practitioners of colour experience working in higher education counselling settings? A grounded theory study. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
Background: Practitioners of colour are underrepresented within psychology and psychotherapy professions across all sectors including higher education. This has implications for both clients and practitioners of colour in terms of training, provision and uptake of services, staff recruitment and progression and therapy outcomes. While there is growing literature relating to the experiences of practitioners of colour working in the NHS, and those of students and academics in universities there is limited research into the experiences of mental health professionals of colour working in higher education counselling services.
Aims: To understand how practitioners of colour experience working in university counselling settings and to develop a model to illustrate how the experiences of interactions with counselling service colleagues, clinical supervisors and students shape personal and professional identities and clinical practice.
Method: Using purposeful sampling this research recruited nine qualified practitioners of colour and conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews to develop a theoretical model of the processes involved using constructivist grounded theory.
Findings: This study identified three theoretical constructs: 1) Having conversations about race which explores how these are influenced. Additionally conversations were found to be mediated by socio-political and counselling contexts; 2) Holding practitioner beliefs about race as essential to clinical practice which examines how beliefs influence how practitioners use supervision, engage with ongoing learning and adapt clinical interventions to provide the opportunity to explore racial identity and experiences; 3) Navigating race, relationships and change in personal and professional identities which illustrates how these processes are shaped by experiences of acceptance and racism and influence the development of personal and professional identities.
Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed in relation to: developing university counselling culture where conversations about race are engaged with rather than avoided in clinical meetings, counselling sessions and supervision; for working with race to be an essential part of pre-qualification training curricula and ongoing CPD; the importance of increasing representation and promoting people of colour to lead counselling service teams; and recommendations for undertaking further research
![[thumbnail of Sarah Shalan_05024493.pdf]](https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png "Sarah Shalan_05024493.pdf")
Restricted to Repository staff only until 31 January 2026.
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