Good news – online counselling is getting some serious attention.

A new training program at the University of Toronto will teach counsellors how to reach out over the Internet to support children and youth in crisis. From University of Toronto -- News@UofT -- U of T to train cyber counsellors (Jul 4/07).

The program will be carried out in a collaboration between the Faculty of Social Work and the Kids Help Phone service, focusing on children and youth, and addressing issues that youth may prefer to raise anonymously. The program takes a cautious approach to the counselling relationship, though:

Student counsellors, with supervisory support, review the questions that children and teens post to a public web forum, then create and post their responses. Youth browsing the site are able to read the questions that other kids are asking and they can see the counsellors’ answers.

Good start - hopefully they will experiment with one-to-one counselling if the FAQ approach works out.