Evidence for the advantages of online counselling for mental health was found before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the outbreak of the epidemic, which required social distancing, mental health service providers were required to convert their face-to-face service to online. Educational counsellors also did this in schools. However, the challenges documented in the provision of online counselling raise the question of whether the integration of digital tools in school counselling continued after the return to routine at school and the removal of the restrictions on social distancing. It is essential to examine this issue to deepen the understanding of the possibility of combining traditional school counselling with online counselling, how it is done, what advantages it has and what challenges it poses.

Therefore, the current study examined how school counsellors combine and integrate their online counselling experience with face-to-face school counselling.
Using a qualitative approach, participants in the study were nineteen school counsellors, all women working in middle or high schools (mean age was 44.22 years). Following semi-structured interviews, results revealed five main themes:
1. The advantages of combining face-to-face and online counselling to promote trust and commitment in the counselling relationship;
2. Tools to strengthen the counselling process through empathy with digital tools in online counselling,
3. Existing challenges in online counselling in the school system,
4. A strategy for optimally combining face-to-face counselling with online counselling.

The research findings point to the advantages of combining counselling in its traditional form with the technological one, not only in crises. At the same time, the presented challenges oblige the education system and the decision-makers to formulate a systematic program for the purpose of training school counsellors, formulating adopted rules of ethics and regulating the boundaries of the school counselling position.

Keywords: School counselling, online counselling, qualitative research.