When starting a new way of record keeping (especially in Counselling where records are just so important) there is always a certain amount of trepidation – made more so by my having to convince my colleague that this program was the way to go………

This trepidation was greatly lessened by the response and support we received from Donald along the way. At times I felt quite sorry for him as within the first few months we had laptop upgrades (which meant re-install of the program and its settings), network issues with Drive allocation, and the usual teething troubles that plague any new system with inexperienced operators. Donald was a great support all along the way, often going above and beyond to get us back in business – and it wasn’t just a case of ‘Do this , now do that.’ Donald got on the system remotely and sorted the issues out, usually with same day service.

As for the program itself, it does what we want it to and when we had a few ideas of how to improve it and adapt it to our situation Donald was only too happy to incorporate them into it and update the program. My colleague and I operate in a college of 1250 students with an age range of 10-18years and this new system has enabled us to streamline our process, collect useful data that allows us to better target the prevention programs we run, and drag ourselves into the 21^st century!   Adrian Hellwig, College Counsellor

Hi Donald, Just wanted to let you know I have had a great year using microsale CounselPro! Am getting ready to make some graphs and charts which will look fantastic. Thanks so much.

CounselPRO by Microsale. For schools or private practice.

As a school counsellor of 20years experience I have found the careful [and secure] keeping of records of more and more concern. The amount of paper build up in the office is incredible and then there are all the records of those clients who are no longer active. I have tended to send them to the past school records secure area but of course some students [who I’ve seen in grade 5 – when our school begins] might go dormant and then resurface in later years so I need to keep those records accessible for at least 8/9 years. And then there is the various paper reports [WISC’s, WIAT’s, Conner’s etc]. All in all I’d gradually come to the decision that I need to make the dive into the 21^st century and go paperless as far as possible. So, with my colleague [who is a psychologist], I began to look around.

It wasn’t a quick, or easy search [Google may be your friend but, despite the reputation it can’t give you the answer when you don’t even know the questions!] but eventually we were able to settle on a program that we thought would meet our needs – and you can even download a trial version.

That was two years ago and we both think it was one of the best decisions we made. The program is called CounselPRO and comes from New Zealand [all but local!] in both school and private practice versions. It already met most of our needs but it was also customisable which is a real bonus.

Rather than try to explain it all let me list some of the features.

• Fully searchable database
• Ability to choose between active/non-active and all databases.
• Future appointment making and past consultation recording
• Full client details data page [including facility to include a picture – a bonus for those of us who have trouble putting faces to names or vice a versa]
• Ability to print a complete client report of all sessions.
• Ability to scan images, reports or add any other electronic files [such as e-mail] to unique client folder.
• Ability to classify [and even sub classify] client presenting issues [eg Grief & Loss – sibling]
• Ability to graph [bar, pie, line] entire client group in any particular year according to classification, sub-classification, consultation type, ethnicity, referral – and many others. Also possible to do a comparison graph over years of practice.
• Ability to produce reports of same.
• Ability to customise business details, consultation fields, appointment times etc.
• Note writing facility with the usual formatting, spell check etc.
• Built in back up / copy file facility.
• And more that either don’t apply to my circumstance or I haven’t discovered yet!

Add to all that excellent service and backup support [the owner of the company can link to your computer if you wish it to help sort out those issues you might have on a time by time basis using a program called Team-viewer].

I don’t often write a testimonial but this program is too good to keep to myself. I’d also like to say that I receive no benefits from this review [other than know I’m possibly doing my fellow counsellors a good turn.

Adrian Hellwig FACA, M Bus [Communication], B.Theol, Dip counselling]

I have found CounselPro is a very effective program that securely holds confidential counselling notes and student information…CounselPro has become an invaluable tool, especially in regards to accessing data and statistics that helps me recognise and summarise presenting issues, year level, gender and socio-cultural trends while also assisting our school to implement year level or whole school strategies. The system is very user friendly (even for a techno-phobe such as myself!) My Principal and Board have found the charts and reports important in terms of understanding and developing ideas about student health and well-being and I have no concerns about maintaining individuals confidentiality. Donald has been an absolute star and a great support for me. He has been readily available to assist me whenever I’ve got stuck – mostly with same day service! The team-viewer aspect of the program has been very helpful and on several occasions Donald has also spoken with our ICT whiz to help support the school and make sure that we are making the most of this wonderful resource…I would absolutely recommend Donald and CounselPro to any counsellors!

Nga manaakitanga

Abbey