`The new Fifth Edition shows Richard Nelson-Jones at his very best: clear, concise and helpful in a practical way. I strongly recommend this text' - Windy Dryden, Professor of Counselling, Goldsmiths College, London In praise of Fourth Edition: 'A welcome update...creating a powerful and stimulating learning experience'- Pat Beardsworth, Director, Welsh Centre for Counselling Psychology, Swansea 'Richard Nelson Jones's use of lifeskills counselling provides significant added value to our services, particularly with our more difficult clients '- David Stratford, Director, Davidson & Associates, Melbourne 'An excellent practical book, packed with useful information. An ideal text for training courses' - Stephen Palmer, Centre for Stress Management, London 'This book provides a secure base from which the counsellor can practice in an empathic, effective and ethical manner' - Robert Bor, Professor of Psychology, City University, London 'A unique combination of theory, skills and practical activities in a highly informative and impressively detailed text' - Ken Fisher, Bolton Institute 'A great training book....extremely useful for a wide variety of counselling, helping and pastoral care settings' - Dr Ron Perry, Director, Institute for Counselling, Sydney, Australia 'Invaluable and interesting text and exercises for building a broad range of counselling skills' - Dr Doug Farnill, Faculty of Medicine, Sydney University, Australia This new Fifth Edition of Richard Nelson-Jones' bestselling Practical Counselling & Helping Skills presents the core skills needed to be a successful counsellor. Fully revised and updated, the text is based on the Relationship-Understanding-Changing (RUC) lifeskills counselling model. This provides a systematic approach for clients to develop specific lifeskills to change how they feel, think, communicate and act, and this book provides ways for the counsellor to facilitate this change. Practical Counselling & Helping Skills guides the reader through the three different stages of the RUC model - 'relating', 'understanding' and 'changing'. Areas covered include: } how to listen to, and understand, the client and their problem } the assessment of feelings, reactions and communications } intervention } ethical issues. The book is packed with case studies and practical examples for the trainee counsellor, and the 'activities' within each chapter enable the student to put theory into practice. This text will be invaluable to all those undertaking counselling training for the first time in a variety of different settings.