From psychology student to seeing your first clients
Most advice for new therapists starts after you qualify, which is far too late to be useful. This page is the honest version of what comes between a psychology degree and a practice with clients in it, written by a platform that will one day want to work with you and would rather be straight with you now.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026
You cannot join MatchyMatch yet, and we are not going to pretend otherwise
To take clients through us you need current registration with a recognised professional body, valid professional indemnity insurance and a legal practice setup. Students and trainees do not meet that bar, and a platform that let them would be doing something wrong by the clients.
Some directories do accept final-year trainees. That is a legitimate different choice, not a trick, and if you are close to qualifying it is worth knowing about. What we can usefully do at this stage is be clear about the route, and be here when you get to the end of it.
What the route actually involves
Pick the route before you pick the course
Counselling, psychotherapy and practitioner psychology are different routes with different training, different lengths and different regulators. The choice determines which register you can eventually join, so it is worth making deliberately rather than discovering later that a course does not lead where you assumed.
Check the requirements at the source
BACP, UKCP, BPS and HCPC each publish their own entry requirements, accredited course lists and supervision expectations, and they change. Read them on the body’s own site rather than trusting a summary, including ours. Anyone who tells you the exact number of hours you need without asking which route you are on is guessing.
Placement hours are where the practice actually forms
Client hours under supervision are the part of training that most resembles the job. Charities, university services and low-cost community counselling services are the usual routes. Start looking earlier than feels necessary, because good placements fill up.
Treat supervision and insurance as part of the career, not admin
Every route requires ongoing supervision, and professional indemnity insurance becomes non-negotiable the moment you see a private client. Both are ongoing costs of practising, so factor them into any plan about what you will charge.
We deliberately do not publish specific hour counts, course fees or timescales here. They differ by route and they change, and a stale number on a page like this one costs someone a year. The bodies publish the current versions.
Who regulates what, and where to check
Four bodies come up constantly and they are not interchangeable. Each publishes its own entry requirements and accredited course lists, and those are the version you should trust over any summary, including this one.
The measures you were probably looking for
A lot of people arrive here searching an instrument by its acronym rather than looking for a test to take. Each of ours is a working version you can complete and see scored, which is a faster way to understand a scale than reading about it.
The part nobody prepares you for: finding clients
Training teaches you to do the work. It rarely teaches you that a private practice is also a business that has to be found by the people who need it. Newly qualified therapists routinely finish an expensive training and then discover that the hardest part is an empty diary.
We wrote the practical side up for qualified therapists, and it is worth reading before you qualify rather than after, because it changes what you set up during training.
Questions students actually ask
Do I need a psychology degree to become a therapist in the UK?
Not for every route. Counselling and psychotherapy training routes often accept people from other backgrounds, while the practitioner psychologist routes are built on an accredited psychology degree. Because the answer differs by route, check the entry requirements published by the body you intend to register with rather than assuming one rule covers all of them.
Can I see private clients while I am still training?
Training routes are built around supervised placement hours rather than private practice, and your course, your supervisor, your insurer and your professional body all have a say. Ask all four before taking a private client, not just one of them.
BACP, UKCP, BPS or HCPC: which one should I aim for?
They are not ranked alternatives, they correspond to different professions and training routes. The practical order is to decide what kind of practitioner you want to be, then find which register that leads to, then choose a course accredited for it. Choosing the course first is how people end up on a route they did not intend.
How do newly qualified therapists get their first clients?
Mostly through directories they pay to appear in, platforms that take a commission on sessions, referrals from other practitioners, and their own website. Each has a different cost structure and a different failure mode, which we compared in detail for qualified therapists.
Can I join MatchyMatch as a student or trainee?
No. Taking clients through us requires current registration with a recognised professional body, valid professional indemnity insurance and a legal practice setup, so we cannot accept students or trainees. Some directories do accept final-year trainees, which is a legitimate different choice worth knowing about if you are close to qualifying.
When you do qualify
We match clients to therapists and handle the first conversation, payments and invoicing. There is no monthly fee and no listing cost: our commission is 25% of each session fee, so you only pay when a client pays you, and you set your own rate. We accept HCPC, BACP, BPS and UKCP registration, or an equivalent recognised body if you trained outside the UK.
How working with us worksBookmark it and come back when you are registered. We would rather you arrive knowing what you are choosing between.