I fully agree with Bitt. Debt consolidation is a fiscally sound approach to managing your finances. The things to look at are the usual loan terms of the final offer (one time payments or increases in principal, interest rate, monthly payment, etc.) as well as what you might be asked to put up as collateral. It never hurts to shop around. I recall reading an article about how many of these "non-profit" counselors are really side-arms of for-profit ventures, and the counselors are trained to push you toward a specific set of products.

My own advice: it's better to get a slightly higher interest rate if you have lower closing costs. "Negative points" are the typical way of doing this. If you can refinance in such a way that your principle stays the same and your rate goes down, then it's pretty much a no-brainer. For anything else, you should be able to ask the loan officer to compute for you the "cross-over point", which is to say, the point at which the additional debt you took on by restructuring your loans is paid off by virtue of your lower interest rates.

On a side note, Google is pretty worthless for this search. I've tried Googling for "debt counseling" or "debt consolidation" and it looks like you mostly get people who've managed to jam their results up to the top. I Googled for "debt consolidation caveats" and got much better results, including this article on CNBC, which seems a good read.