The document discusses the discipline of counseling. It defines counseling as guiding a person during life stages involving reassessment. Counselors are professionally trained to provide advice to help clients explore problems and find better solutions. The document discusses several important contexts in counseling including peers, neighborhood, culture and the counseling situation itself. It also outlines key factors that influence counseling outcomes, such as client factors, counselor factors, contextual factors and the counseling process. Principles of effective counseling are also presented, such as providing advice, reassurance, emotional release, clarified thinking, and helping clients reorient goals.
The document discusses the discipline of counseling. It defines counseling as guiding a person during life stages involving reassessment. Counselors are professionally trained to provide advice to help clients explore problems and find better solutions. The document discusses several important contexts in counseling including peers, neighborhood, culture and the counseling situation itself. It also outlines key factors that influence counseling outcomes, such as client factors, counselor factors, contextual factors and the counseling process. Principles of effective counseling are also presented, such as providing advice, reassurance, emotional release, clarified thinking, and helping clients reorient goals.
The document discusses the discipline of counseling. It defines counseling as guiding a person during life stages involving reassessment. Counselors are professionally trained to provide advice to help clients explore problems and find better solutions. The document discusses several important contexts in counseling including peers, neighborhood, culture and the counseling situation itself. It also outlines key factors that influence counseling outcomes, such as client factors, counselor factors, contextual factors and the counseling process. Principles of effective counseling are also presented, such as providing advice, reassurance, emotional release, clarified thinking, and helping clients reorient goals.
Sociology defines counselling as “ the process of Guiding a person during a stage of life when reassessment o be made about himself or herself and his or her life course”. Counsellors are professionally trained and certified to perform counselling. Their job is to provide advice or guidance in decision- making in emotionally significant situations by helping clients explore and understand their worlds and discover better ways and well- informed choices in resolving an emotional or interpersonal problem. Context and the Basic concept of Counselling
Counselling is affected by the context and the surrounding
factors. They are explored here as part of basic concepts of counselling that are very important to consider.
Peers as Context – Friend’s attitude, norms and behaviours
have a strong influence on adolescents. May personal issues are often introduced to the individual by their peers. Parents can have much influence over their adolescent children. Critical family issues involve family roles, both positively and negative influence that peers have on the adolescents’ issues. Neighbourhood as Context- the interactions between the family and its neighbourhood as immediate context are also important to consider. A Family functions within a particular neighbourhood. He behavioural problems in this particular neighbourhood require that families work against crime and social Isolation that may impact them. This is much easier in the countryside communities where a community network of parents, teacher, grandparents, and civic leaders exist and where a sense of collaboration in raising the children of the community forms part of shared ethos. For this reason neighbourhood context is an important consideration in counselling. It can both introduce additional strengths or challenges to parenting and resource that should be considered when working with families. Culture as Context- Culture provided meaning and coherence of life to any orderly life such as community or organization. Various sectors of community families, peers and neighbourhoods are all bound together by the cultural context that influences them all as individual members. Therefore, the cultural is a major consideration in counselling. Extensive research on culture and the family has demonstrated that so much influence on the individual child and family is exerted by the cultural context Culture- is the source of norms, values, symbols, and language which provide the basis for the normal functioning of an individual. Understanding the cultural context of a client makes it easier for a counsellors to appreciate the nature of their struggles as well as their cultural conditioning that informs certain personal characteristics such as degree of openness to share personal concerns, self- revealing, making choices and personal determination for independence. Counselling as context- the National Institute of Health recognizes counselling itself as a context. Regardless of a therapeutic approach in use, the counselling situation in itself is a context. There is a deliberate specific focus, a set of procedures, rules, expectation, experiences and a way of monitoring progress and determining results in any therapeutic approach( Corey 1991). Counselling can therefore be affected by the counselling context. 1. Client Factor. The client factors are everything that a client brings to the counselling context. Or she is not a passive object receiving treatment in the manner of a traditional-patient situation. The clients bring so much to the counselling context and therefore I remains imperative that they are considered as an active part of the process. Very often , the expectations and attitude of the client define the result of a counselling process and experience. The success or Failure of the counselling process depends so much on the client. 2. Counsellor Factors- The personality, skills and personal qualities of a counsellors can significantly impact the outcomes of the counselling relationship (Vellemen 2001). The counsellor’s personal style and qualities can make the intervention successful. The conditions for self – restoration or experience of self-empowerment in a client are some qualities that a counsellors usually brings about. The experience of positive and negative conditions can be attributed to the counsellors. This may be amplified or aggravated by the choice of counselling methods that the counsellors uses in his or her practice; this makes counselling both a science and also an art. Contextual Factors. The context in which counselling takes place can define the outcomes. Counsellors are therefore concerned with the environment and atmosphere where to conduct the sessions. There are ideal context and not ideal ones. For example , physical noise and distance trigger the feeling of emotional safety of the client. A noisy place can be a distraction that prevents healing. A place where a client feels strongly fearful can provide a blockage from genuine engagement with counselling process and procedure. A client has to feel comfortable and positive. Ideally, counselling should take place in a quiet, warm, and comfortable place away from any distraction. Unless the counsellors and client talk in comfort and safety, there is no way steps of healing can commence and yield desirable outcomes. 4. Process Factors- the process factors constitute the actual counselling undertaking. Velleman (2001) presents the following six stages, which for him apply to all problem areas in the process of counselling.
A. Developing trust- this involves providing warmth, genuineness, and empathy.
B. Exploring problem areas- this involves providing a clear and deep analysis of what the problem is, where it comes from, its triggers, and why it may have developed. C. Helping to set goals- This Involves setting and managing goal- directed interventions. D. Empowering into actions- this means fostering to achieve set goals. E. Helping to maintain change- this means providing support and other techniques to enable the client to maintain changes. F. Agreeing when to end the helping relationship- This implies that assurances are there that guarantee the process is being directed by the client and toward independence. Principles of counselling
Advice- Counselling may involve advice-giving as one of the several
functions that counsellors perform. When this is done, the requirement is that a counsellor makes judgements about a counselee’s problems and lays out options for a course of action. Advice-giving has to void breeding a relationship in which the counselee feels inferior and emotionally dependent on the counsellors.
Reassurance- Counselling involves providing clients with reassurance,
which is a way of giving them courage to face a problem or confidence that they are pursuing a suitable course of action. Reassurance is a valuable principle because it can bring about sense of relief that may empwer a client to function normally again Release of emotional Tension- Counselling provides clients the opportunity to get emotional release from their pent-up frustration an other personal issues. Counselling experience shows that as persons begin to explain their concerns to a sympathetic listener, tensions begin to subside. They become more relaxed and tend to become more coherent and rational. The release of tensions helps remove mental blocks by providing a solution to the problem.
Clarified thinking- Clarified thinking tends to take place while counsellors
and counselee are talking and therefore becomes a logical emotional release. As this relationship goes on, other self- empowering result may take place later as a result of development during the counselling relationship. Clarified thinking encourages a client to accept responsibility for problems and to be more realistic in solving them. Reorientation- involves a change in the clients emotional self through a change in basic goal and aspiration. This requires a revision of the client’s level of aspirations. This requires a revision of the clients’ level of aspiration to bring it more in line with actual and realistic attainment. It enables clients to recognize and accept their own limitations. The counsellor’s job is to recognize those in need of reorientation and facilitate appropriate interventions.