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1966
Churches’ Counselling Service was started as a pilot project in September 1966. Located at No. 5, Fort Canning Road, the service offered counselling as the core programme. The first Director and Principal Counsellor was Rev Gunnar J. Teilmann and the Clinical Director was Dr Chester Raber.
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1968
Churches’ Counselling Service was confirmed to be a permanent service after being well-received as a pilot project for 2 years. The Service was a collaboration between Wesley Methodist Church and St. Andrew’s Cathedral.
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1969
The inception of Samaritans of Singapore arising from the planning and training of Churches’ Counselling Service.
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1972
Anthony Yeo and Virginia Heng became the first two Asians to join as Staff at Churches’ Counselling Service. Churches’ Counselling Service became the approved centre for Clinical Pastoral Education and launched her first training programme on Clinical Pastoral Care.
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1975
Registered and approved as a Society under the Registry of Societies, the centre moved out of Fort Canning to a temporary office space in Wesley Methodist Church and St Andrew’s Cathedral and was renamed to ‘Counselling and Care Service’.
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1976
Relocated to Singapore Council of Social Service (SCSS) building, 11 Penang Lane #06-03 and was renamed as ‘Counselling and Care Centre’ [CCC] 2 years later in 1978.
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1980
Anthony Yeo became the first Asian Director as Rev. Teilmann returned as a missionary to Blacksburg, Virginia in the States after 14 years. CCC became the first in Singapore to use a one-way mirror for observation of counselling sessions and supervision.
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1983
Launched the ‘Becoming’ magazine, a quarterly publication on family life education. Publication of the magazine ceased in Year 1988 due to the lack of financial viability.
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1984
Registered as a Charity under the Charities Act and joined Community Chest of Singapore. Community Chest has been funding CCC ever since. Training programmes were more established with the Counsellor Training Programme becoming more clinical in approach.
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1990
Launched the Pastoral Counselling Programme. CCC also celebrated its 25th Anniversary by organizing a conference-cum-dinner themed ‘New frontiers for Counselling in the 21st Century’. CCC relocated to 1 Sophia Road, #06-19, Peace Centre and launched the two-year part-time programme on, ‘Post Graduate Diploma in Marital and Family Therapy’, the first and only programme in systemic thinking and approach in Singapore. It was jointly organised with the Institute of Family Therapy, London.
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1993
The book ‘Counselling: A Problem Solving Approach and “Practics’ was published. The research project – an exploration of indicators that assisted in the experience of positive outcome of counselling by clients with marital issues was revived. The findings filled an existing gap in the available local research literature.
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1994
Relocated to Blk 536, Upper Cross Street, #05-241, Hong Lim Complex, Chinatown. Contributions to the ‘Dear Aggie’ column of the New Paper started this year. In response to the needs for Mandarin-speaking counsellors, the Counsellor Training (Mandarin) Programme, in collaboration with Fei Yue Counselling Centre was also launched.
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1996
CCC celebrated its 30th Anniversary and conducted a two-day conference drawing just over two hundred participants on 14 and 15 November. CCC provided counselling services for cases referred by Family Court of Singapore.
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1997
Engaged by Singapore Airlines to train members of the Buddies System in the management of crises and disasters. CCC also provided training for police officers in dealing with spousal violence. The Post Graduate Diploma in Marital and Family Therapy that was jointly organised with the Institute of Family Therapy attained certification by Birkbeck College, University of London.
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2000
CCC was appointed as the training provider for School Counsellors under the Ministry of Education.
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2001
CCC was increasingly recognised as the centre for crisis management training in critical incidents as reflected in the number of such requests from several corporations.
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2002
Launched Diploma in Clinical Supervision which replaced the Certificate programme. CCC also published a book by Anthony Yeo titled, ‘When Mourning Breaks: Tales of Hope and Healing’.
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2005
Launched Masters in Family and Systemic Psychotherapy, a three-way partnership involving CCC, the Institute of Family Therapy (U.K.) and Middlesex University (U.K.). This programme replaced the Post Graduate Diploma in Marital and Family Therapy.
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2006
CCC celebrated her 40th Anniversary with a two-day conference that was graced by Mr S.R Nathan, the then President of Singapore. Three books were also launched during the conference, namely, ‘On Wings of Storm’, ‘Service Provision and Utilisation’, and ‘Labyrinth of Therapeutic Encounters: a Collection of Essays’.
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2007
Celebrated Anthony Yeo’s 35th year of service. He had contributed significantly and was known as the “Father of Counselling in Singapore”.
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2009
Anthony Yeo passed away. CCC conducted a memorial service in tribute to Anthony Yeo’s contributions.
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2010
CCC organised a Systemic Psychotherapy Conference and launched a book on, ‘Journeys in Systemic Psychotherapy: Theory, Practice and Research’.
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2011
Registered with Council of Private Education (CPE) for provision of training programmes.
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2012
The 5th and last batch of the Masters programme in Family and Systemic Psychotherapy was run. This was due to the lack of financial viability from the overseas academic partner.
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2013
Started ‘Supervision of Supervision’ consultation sessions for consulting agencies in response to requests.
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2014
Launched the book, ‘Clinical Supervision – Clinicians’ Perspectives and Practices: Towards Professionalising Counselling’.
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2015
Management and staff team went through a strategic planning retreat to review the mission, vision and clarify the values reflecting the core of CCC’s identity. As part of the preparation for the 50th Anniversary, a commemorative video – ‘Celebrating 50 years of Care, Collaborating for Change and Continuing the Legacy ‘ – was produced.
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2016
CCC celebrated her 50th Anniversary with an Open House, a two-day conference and a Jubilee Dinner. The book ‘Becoming’ was published and given as a gift to the public. It recorded 50 life stories of CCC’s clients, trainees and consultees who were in pursuit of their personal and professional well-being.
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2017
Launched two certificate courses, namely, Post Graduate Certificate in Family-based Casework Supervision Training for FSCs and the Post Graduate Certificate in Working with the Emotional World of Children in response to the increasing demands for training in supervision and in working with children and families in the community.
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2018
The Management Committee had a strategic planning retreat to rise up to the challenges of meeting increased demands from the community with limited funding and resources. CCC also went beyond Singapore shores and trained the teaching staff from University of the Labour and Social Affairs at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
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2019
Conducted a series of workshops by world-renowned trainers like David Greenan, Peter Hawkins, Jill Freedman, Gene Combs, Barry Mason and Barbara McKay. To commemorate the 10th year of the passing of Mr Anthony Yeo, the Anthony Yeo Memorial Conference and the launch of the book ‘Weaving Compassion: Relational Understandings and Practices’ by the Minister of Social and Family Development Mr Desmond Lee was also done.
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2020
The delivery of the counselling, training and consultation services was affected by the implementation of safe-distance measures against COVID-19 during February to March 2020. As such, CCC crossed the significant milestone of making our services available online.
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2021
CCC was awarded the one-year Edutrust Provisional Certification by the Committee of Private Education (CPE) in Singapore on 24 May 2021. This award is a recognition and affirmation of CCC’s efforts to provide higher standards in key areas of management and provision of professional counselling and clinical supervision training services in Singapore.
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