Who created the Student Library?

Created by Colette Kelly, Modified on Tue, 5 May at 1:33 PM by Colette Kelly

At a Glance

The Student Library was founded in 2015 by Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes — both qualified counsellors, supervisors, lecturers, and published authors. They built it because they saw too many students overwhelmed by academic demands and unclear course materials.

Ken Kelly

Co-founder of Counselling Tutor. Qualified counsellor, clinical supervisor, and holder of a teaching qualification. Author of Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide. Co-author of Online and Telephone Counselling: A Practitioner's Guide. Demonstrates counselling skills in live simulated sessions inside the Student Library.

Rory Lees-Oakes

Co-founder of Counselling Tutor. Qualified counsellor, clinical supervisor, and lecturer with over a decade of experience teaching counselling at practice level. Author of Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide. Silver Plato Award winner for outstanding use of technology in education. Fellow of the Pearson Teaching Awards.

Why they built it

Ken and Rory saw students wrestling with the same problems again and again. Course materials that were impenetrable. Tutor feedback that was vague. Theory taught once and never revisited. Students leaving sessions more confused than when they walked in.

They knew there was a better way to teach this material — clearly, in plain English, with empathy for what counselling students actually go through. The Student Library is the result.

Their philosophy: teach with clarity, structure, and integrity — not just passion.

The wider Counselling Tutor story

The library sits within Counselling Tutor — a ten-plus-year-old organisation that includes the Counselling Tutor Podcast, a YouTube channel with thousands of free resources, the largest counselling student community in the world, and training programmes that have reached over 40,000 practitioners.

You may already know Ken and Rory's voices from the podcast. The library is where their teaching lives in full.

Want to know more?

You can see everything that's inside — and current membership options — at the Student Library page.

If you have a specific question we haven't answered here, email us at support@counsellingtutor.com — a real person will reply within 24 hours.