How many clients should a counsellor see in a day?

Short answer: there isn’t a one-size-fits-all number. Our ethical duty is to safeguard the quality of therapy and our fitness to practise. The BACP Ethical Framework doesn’t set a fixed limit; instead, it asks us to ensure our wellbeing is sufficient to sustain the quality of our work and to maintain our physical and psychological health so we can practise safely.

What UK guidance can (and can’t) tell us

• BACP No prescribed daily maximum. The emphasis is on working within competence, monitoring your wellbeing, using supervision, and caring for self as essential to good practice.

• NHS Talking Therapies (for context): Services typically plan around ~20 attended clinical hours per week for full-time therapists and advise against exceeding 20 because it may impact wellbeing and clinical effectiveness. Interpreted across a five-day week with ~50-minute sessions, that’s roughly 4–5 clients per day on average. (This is service guidance, not a rule for private practice—but it’s a useful benchmark.) NHS England

• Burnout evidence: High workload (caseload/hours) correlates with burnout in therapists—another reason to cap daily numbers according to your capacity and context. PMC

What peers actually do (themes from practitioner conversations)

Without naming individuals, here’s the pattern that consistently shows up when counsellors talk shop:

• Common daily range: 3–6.

• “Feels right” for many: 4–5 per day, with breaks.

• Occasional stretches: Some manage 6–7 on certain days if there are generous gaps and lighter days elsewhere.

• Context matters: Online work often feels more tiring (screen/eye strain, fewer grounding cues), couples’ work can reduce capacity, and trauma-heavy caseloads usually lower the daily ceiling.

If you notice your presence fading by client 4 or 5—even if clients “wouldn’t notice”—your body is already telling you where your limit is.

Factors that change your daily maximum

• Format & length: online vs in-person; 50, 60, 75 or 90-minute sessions. Typical one-to-one sessions are 50–60 minutes, which also builds in a short pause for both client and therapist. Mind

• Complexity & risk: trauma work, couples/families, safeguarding work, frequent crisis contacts.

• Breaks & spacing: micro-breaks between sessions; a longer mid-day reset.

• Admin load: notes, liaison, outcome measures, invoicing.

• Travel: if you work across locations or schools.

• Your life & health: parenting/caring, neurodiversity/sensory needs, long-term conditions, or simply where you are in your career.

Breaks: the unglamorous key to consistent therapy

For online days, apply DSE guidance: short, frequent breaks beat longer, infrequent ones—for example 5–10 minutes each hour to move, change posture and rest your eyes. (There’s no set legal interval for self-employed DSE users; it’s about preventing fatigue.) HSE

If you’re employed, the Working Time Regulations (GOV.UK) you at least a 20-minute uninterrupted break after 6 hours; treat that as a minimum baseline for humane scheduling.

And remember the Ethical Framework’s practicalities around breaks and endings—plan time away and communicate it clearly in your contracting so neither you nor clients are running on empty.

A simple capacity calculator (use it as a sense-check)

1. Start with your weekly clinical ceiling.

   • If you’re full-time and want an NHS-style benchmark, try 18–20 clinical hours/week. Reduce pro-rata for part-time, supervision/teaching, or complex caseloads.

2. Divide by your working days.

   • Example: 18 hours over 4 days ≈ 4–5 clients per day (50-minute sessions).

3. Now stress-test it against your reality:

   • Heavy trauma or couples?

   • All online? Build in 10-minute micro-breaks every hour (which effectively reduces daily slots).

   • Lots of liaison/admin? Add 10–15 minutes per client for notes and calls.

4. Pilot for two weeks. Review in supervision and adjust.

Money matters (without overloading your diary)

It can be tempting to keep adding clients to “make it work.” In practice, a sustainable fee protects both you and your clients’ experience. Use your preferred weekly number (say 16 clients/week) to check viability over your working weeks per year, then set fees accordingly. If you want to offer lower-cost access, ring-fence limited concession places rather than expanding daily volume.

Red flags you’re over capacity

• You feel noticeably less present with your final client(s).

• Shortcuts in notes or avoidant admin creep in.

• You need a full evening to recover after routine days.

• Supervision keeps focusing on fatigue, irritability, or boundary slips.
  These are ethical signals to adjust your load, not personal failings. The Ethical Framework places care of self at the heart of safe practice—use that as your permission slip to change gear.

Putting it together (my rule of thumb)

• Most private practitioners settle around 4–5 per day with proper breaks.

• 6 is doable occasionally when spaced out and balanced by lighter days.

• Quality trumps quantity—if your presence dips, your number is too high.

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