Individual and Group Counseling: Responding to Selected Needs in Schools

1. Individual and Group Counseling: Responding to Selected Needs in Schools CHAPTER 8

2. GOAL • To provide evidence of the demand for counseling interventions from school counselors; to propose a set of basic counseling competencies for a balanced school counseling program.

3. DEMAND FOR COUNSELING INTERVENTIONS • The schools are a microcosm of society. • The Transforming School Counseling Initiative (TSCI) (Education Trust, 1997) viewed counseling the whole child as an important role for school counselors, especially academic counseling for learning and achievement and supporting student success (House & Hayes, 2002). • ASCA has since developed the ASCA Student Standards (ASCA, 2013). • ASCA National Model (2012) also emphasizes counseling the whole child within academic, career, and personal/social domains.

4. BASIC INGREDIENTS OF COUNSELING INTERVENTIONS • Point of view • Foundations • Types of responsive counseling interventions • Prevention programming and responsive counseling interventions may overlap • Developmental perspective

5. THE NATURE OF COUNSELING INTERVENTIONS IN SCHOOLS • School counselors engage in a greater variety of counseling interventions, many of which are very brief. • School counseling interventions are short-term rather than long-term. • Some interventions are short-term because the nature of the student’s needs demands nothing else. Others are shortened because a referral is better.

6. FACTORS THAT IMPINGE ON THE LENGTH OF SCHOOL COUNSELING SESSIONS • (a) the large number of students that each counselor is to serve • (b) little time available for students to see a counselor because of tight academic scheduling • (c) concern about taking students away from their classroom studies for too long • (d) in secondary schools, scheduling periods that are about 40 to 45 minutes in length • (e) school systems that do not provide activity periods or study halls for students

7. STAGES • STAGE ONE: EMPATHIC RELATIONSHIP • STAGE TWO: STORY AND STRENGTHS • STAGE THREE: MUTUAL GOAL SETTING • STAGES FOUR AND FIVE: RE-STORY AND ACTION • TERMINATE AND HELP STUDENT CLIENTS GENERALIZE AND ACT ON THEIR ACTION PLANS

8. EVALUATING INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP COUNSELING • Single-subject designs: • (a) mutually specify the counseling intervention goals so counselor and student clients are in agreement and working together to achieve them • (b) identify objectively scored behaviors or measures of goal attainment that student clients can use successfully and that provide meaningful data for record keeping • (c) collect assessments of the behavior and goal attainment measure over time segments that are appropriate for the targeted goals (e.g., hours, days, weeks, or months) • (d) establish baseline data on the behavior and goal attainment measures before attempting to institute a plan or program to achieve the goals

9. COLLECT CASE DATA IN A PORTFOLIO • Auseful accountability strategy • Has promise for helping clients manage their progress toward goal attainment better and offers counselors data to help them work with specific student clients more efficiently and effectively

10. THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-MONITORING BY STUDENT CLIENTS • Students involved in individual and small group counseling spend significantly more time away from sessions with counselors than they do in the sessions. • Establishing systems for helping student clients monitor their progress toward achieving targeted counseling goals when away from their schools and their school counselors is an important component in their successfully achieving targeted counseling goals.

11. APPLICATION TO TECHNOLOGY • Watch a film or a talk show and analyze the differences among conversing, interviewing, and counseling. • Create an online spreadsheet that can help you keep track of specific community resources.