FOR THE PAST 11 years the Centre for Adult and Community Education at Maynooth has run a foundation course in counselling skills.

The demand for places has been phenomenal - last October people started queuing for registration three hours before the doors opened.

There are now over 1,000 students participating in the two year programme, both at Maynooth and at outreach centres around the country - even though this course is not intended to confer a professional qualification.

"It is not our intention to produce trained counsellors," explains Mary Ryan, continuing education co ordinator at the centre. "The course is designed for people who are interested in counselling and who want to explore the area in more detail.

"That said, it is not an easy course to do. It demands a lot of people and it requires commitment. It's not the type of course people drift into because they want something to do in the evening."

According to Ryan, people have varying reasons for joining the course. Broadly, they can be broken down into two groups: those doing it for personal reasons and those whose jobs require skilled interaction with others. The latter group would include teachers nurses, clergy, personnel managers and industrial relations specialists.

"I think the fact that society has changed so much has created a great deal of uncertainty and crisis for many people - and they are looking for ways of making sense of their own lives or helping others to cope with their experiences more effectively," Ryan says.

"This is particularly true for women, whose roles have changed dramatically, and for those who are attempting to come to terms with issues such as sexual abuse or violence in the home. The responsibilities of parenting and the increasing demands of the workplace are all, putting people under pressure in different ways.

"The course aims to give them the space in which to work out where they fit into the picture and to develop and internalise the basic counselling skills."

MARIE MILLS works as a security officer at Maynooth and she is in her second year of the course. "I found that students would chat informally to me about their problems, with teenage children of my own I could often appreciate their difficulties. But I felt I would like to be able to be of more benefit to them, so I decided to do the course with this in mind.

"It was all very new to me, but I have really enjoyed it and you do find out a lot about yourself along the way. It has helped me at work and in my family life and it has broadened my outlook on the world.

"The course participants come from all walks of life," Mills says, "so you meet a very interesting cross section of people. I found the psychology end of the course particularly interesting and I would like to follow up on this."

Malachy Kinnerney set up ACCEPT (the Association for Community Counselling, Education and Psychological Training) in 1987 with the specific aim of training people in counselling for voluntary and community based groups - as opposed to private practice. "My main interest is in what counselling therapy can deliver to the community and to community groups," he says.

"For example, we provide specific courses on the skills, theory and practice involved in community counselling, on HIV/AIDS counselling and on cancer counselling. Our courses are attended by those looking for personal development and by those whose work brings them into contact with other people's difficulties, from solicitors to doctors to those who want to work as counsellors in the voluntary sector.

"The fragmentation of communities, the breakdown in authority, increased anxiety and social alienation are just some of the forces which are creating a need in people for fulfilment - and to form some sort of deeper emotional or spiritual connection with the world they live in," Kinnerney says.

"I came to the counselling course through seeing a big change for the better in someone else who had done it," says "Bridget", a first year student on the Maynooth course who prefers not to be identified by her real name. "My background was quite unstable and I was finding it difficult to sustain relationships, and I felt I needed to do something to bring about a change in myself.

"Since beginning the course I have grown a lot," Bridget adds. "I now see things in a bigger way - I have more insight. I think the course has been very good in showing that there are other ways and other windows on the world, and I don't rush to take on other people's loads in the same way as I used to."