Diploma in Special Care Counselling is a diploma in Social Work programme offered by Collège Mérici in Québec, Canada. Tuition for international students is CAD 6,814 per semester (CAD 2,272 per semester for local students).
At a glance
Degree:Diploma
Field:Social Work
Local tuition: CAD 2,272 / semester
International tuition: CAD 6,814 / semester
Information for the 2027/28 academic year · Last reviewed September 2026 ·
Program details
Overview
This technical college program trains students to work as specialized educators supporting people facing developmental, social or behavioural challenges. Coursework introduces the profession and its governing regulations, and covers communicating professionally with community networks, families, and cultural and Indigenous communities. Students learn to build helping relationships, analyze issues around social participation, apply safe intervention practices, observe behaviour and design intervention plans, and lead clinical activities. The curriculum addresses intervention approaches for a wide range of client groups, including people with intellectual disabilities, autism, learning and language difficulties, physical or neurological deficits, at-risk youth, older adults, mental health conditions, addictions, and social exclusion or violence. The program includes supervised internship placements. Graduates of an early childhood education diploma may follow an accelerated path through the program. The program is offered with fall and winter intakes, has no enrolment quota, and carries no special admission conditions beyond general college entry requirements; a weekend, fully online format is also offered. It suits students drawn to hands-on, people-facing work who want to support diverse populations across community, health and educational settings.
Requirements
Admission Requirements: Collège Mérici requires the general DEC entry standing for this Special Care Counselling (Techniques d'éducation spécialisée) programme: a Secondary 5 transcript from Quebec's Ministère de l'Éducation or the recognized equivalent, a $50 admission fee, and certified transcripts covering the applicant's last three years of study; candidates who did not study in French in Canada, France, Belgium, Monaco, or an accredited French lycée abroad must also submit French-language test results. The programme's own page lists no particular admission conditions beyond that baseline ('Aucune') and has no enrolment cap. Applicants who already hold a diploma in Techniques de l'éducation à l'enfance (early childhood education) qualify for an accelerated pathway through the programme.
Application Details
Application Deadline:Domestic applicants to Collège Mérici, a private CEGEP, can begin applying online for the Automne 2027 intake starting 15 September 2026, per the college's own admissions announcement. No closing date, equal-consideration date, or program-specific deadline is published anywhere on the site: Mérici's admission and international pages are built as a client-side JavaScript application whose content could not be retrieved through a browser-UA fetch or an archived copy. No distinct international-applicant deadline, process, or statement on rolling admission is published either. Whether seats are filled on a rolling basis could not be confirmed from the institution's own pages and would need to be checked directly with its admissions office. These are institution-wide dates; this programme publishes no deadline of its own.
