How to not get burned out as a biblical counseling administrator
1. Delegate tasks to others.
Do you (and only you) need to be the one to assign counselors to counselees, schedule appointments, review session notes, etc., or is there another trusted believer who can help you with this? If so, you may want to consider delegating administrative tasks to a co-admin.
2. Assign supervisors to counselors.
Supervisors can take on some or all of the responsibility of overseeing certain counselors’ cases. They can also be responsible for providing feedback and encouragement in counselors’ session notes.
3. Have counselors schedule their own appointments.
This is by far the easiest way for an administrator to handle scheduling. The only thing you’d need to do is to periodically check your ministry’s master calendar to ensure that people are being met with in a timely manner (see our article on how to schedule well).
If some of your counselors prefer that you schedule their appointments for them, you could make exceptions for them or have an assistant schedule their appointments for you.
4. Automate some tasks.
As you think through your process, you may consider automating some tasks to save time. Here are some examples of things that you may want to automate…
- Instead of going back and forth with people who are requesting counseling, you may wish to consider having a Client Portal. This way, you’d eliminate all back and forth and would only be notified once someone has already given you their contact information, filled out your pre-counseling forms, told you their availability, and is ready to be assigned to a counselor.
- Instead of emailing each counselor to ask them if they’re available and willing to take a case, first check the counselor’s availability, case load, and credentials/skillset. This way, you’ll avoid unneeded back-and-forth again.
- Instead of taking time out of your busy schedule to remind people about their appointments, you could consider scheduling (or having counselors schedule their own) recurring appointments. You could even schedule appointment reminders for clients that would be sent out in advance.
- Have your counselors use an automated accountability partner (like BibliCare’s), rather than hunting down each counselor to see if they completed their session notes.
5. Consider your process.
You may want to consider your process to see if anything could be simpler or more streamlined (see our article: What is the counseling process?).
This is a real-life example of a time-consuming process (this process will burn you out quickly!):
- A counselee emails the counseling administrator to request counseling.
- The administrator asks what they need counseling for.
- The counselee tells them.
- The administrator checks to see if the counselee has been seen before or if they’re new.
- The administrator asks each counselor if they have time to take on the case.
- If someone is available to take the case, the counseling administrator emails the counselee their pre-counseling forms (like their Intake Form).
- The counselee prints the forms, completes them by hand, and then drives to the church office to drop them off.
- The administrator assigns the best-suited counselor for the case.
This is an example of a time-efficient process using BibliCare (life is easier when the process is streamlined!):
- A new counselee clicks on a link on your ministry’s website. This link will take them to a place where they can securely fill out pre-counseling forms and request counseling online.
- The counseling administrator is automatically alerted when the counselee is ready to be assigned to a counselor.
- The administrator can see who is available to counsel without needing to contact anyone and assigns the best-fitting counselor to the case.
Bonus: Gain oversight.
- Some counselors spend hours finding out answers to questions regarding things like: how many men have been counseled this year, who should take a case, how many hours did a certain counselor counsel this month, etc. You can manually track this information in an excel sheet. Alternatively, if you used BibliCare’s Ministry Overview, Case Summary, or Counselee Reports page, you could find the answers to all these questions in a few clicks.