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Counseling in the DAP: Enhancing Student Wellbeing and Support Services

This book explores the role of school counselors as counselors, providing prevention, intervention, and treatment strategies in collaboration with community mental health professionals. Topics include crisis intervention, suicide prevention, multicultural counseling, and developmentally appropriate counseling. Written by Kelli Saginak, Amy Taake, and Anna Girdauskas from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

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Counseling in the DAP: Enhancing Student Wellbeing and Support Services

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  1. Publisher to insert cover image here CHAPTER 8DELIVERY SYSTEM: COUNSELING ACTIVITIES IN THE DAP Developed by: Kelli Saginak, Amy Taake, & Anna GirdauskasUniversity of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

  2. The School Counselor as Counselor • Partnership with community mental health counselors is important to understand • A school counselor may be the only person who interacts with students who is trained in any mental health paradigm • only person able to provide help and referrals • Solid identification of school counselors as counselors who provide first-line prevention and intervention

  3. The School Counselor as Counselor • Often many misconceptions of counseling • Historical context of school counseling • Movie and public depictions of counselors • Letters to parents and teachers at the beginning of each year serve to introduce the nature and scope of the CSCP

  4. Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment: When to Counsel and When to Refer • Counselors try to enhance the positive elements of a student’s life and mitigate the effect of negative elements through prevention efforts • strengths-based counseling • Work with primarily short-term and medium-term issues • Short-term issues: 4-8 counseling meetings (lasting 10-30 minutes each)

  5. Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment: When to Counsel and When to Refer • Medium-term issues: full semester or may resolve themselves as student matures and time passes • Deep-level issues may require lifelong mental health work • Counselor provide immediate intervention with referral to community mental health counselors for treatment

  6. Collaboration Between Counselors • The community therapist and the school counselor would collaborate so that the school counselor: • Knows what medication(s) the student is taking • Would be available if the student experienced a crisis during school • Would assist in the coordination of IEP meetings • Would provide individual counseling for academic, career, and personal/social issues • Includes the student in any groups currently meeting for students with similar issues

  7. Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention • Crisis: an event that exceeds the organism’s ability to cope • in the school community • in the individual lives of students • Building crisis response involves appropriate channels for communication and information, both inside and outside the school community • Individual crisis intervention is also known as suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention

  8. Suicide Intervention • Prevention efforts involve informing all members of the • School counselor teaches basic assessment strategies so that everyone can help in intervention efforts • promotes referral to the school counselor if there are any concerns about potential suicide school community • Critical to take every threat seriously • Ensure the safety of the student • Consult with colleagues • Inform and involve caregivers • Follow district and building protocol

  9. Helpful Acronyms • IS PATH WARM? • ideation, substance abuse, purposelessness, anxiety, trapped, hopelessness, withdrawal, anger, recklessness, mood changes • SLAP • S-Specifity of the suicide plan • L-Lethality of the means for carrying out the suicide plan • A-Availability of the means for carrying out the suicide plan • P-Proximity to help

  10. Intervention Strategies • Remain with the student • Ask direct questions for clarity and assessment of risk • Encourage the student to express feelings • Focus on the present, not the past or future • Express sincere concern about the student • Encourage the student to broaden his or her awareness of alternatives to suicide

  11. Intervention Strategies • Listen actively, calmly, and without judgement or criticism • Follow your school’s intervention plan and alert the crisis team in the building/district • Contact the student’s caregivers • Refer the student to a community-based counselor

  12. Multiculturally Appropriate Counseling • Broaden your connections with persons of diversity • Pursue multicultural professional development and training • Address multicultural differences explicitly with the student

  13. Multiculturally Appropriate Counseling • Understanding of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies • First know their internalized societal messages about those who are “different” • Pursue informed perspectives about the particular group whom which they are working • Weave insights into healing strategies that meet the needs of the client

  14. Developmentally Appropriate Counseling • Take the foundation counseling skills you’ve learned and modify them to counsel young people in both individual and group counseling settings

  15. Developmentally Appropriate Counseling • Must be mindful of the following guidelines: • Young people need to be active because they possess a shorter attention span than adults • Young people are still developing their own moral compass and intellectual, critical thinking skills • Young people may not have the emotional intelligence to be able to identify or describe their emotions

  16. Developmentally Appropriate Counseling • Young people need to feel free to choose, while concurrently needing help articulating their framework by which to evaluate alternatives • Young people need help developing strategies for generating and evaluating alternatives, making a commitment to an identifiable alternative, and then understanding the consequences of the choices they make

  17. Legal and Ethical Considerations • Be open and sensitive to all issues • Non-verbal cues • Constantly assess all areas of a student’s functioning • Provide adequate time and attention to all students • Students need to know you’re not going to “freak out” when you hear their problems • Must understand both the process of helping your students and the product of healing that you hope for your students

  18. Assessment within the Counseling Process • First use of “assessment” refers to the compilation of needs and outcomes for program planning and evaluation • Needs: assessed through surveys of students, teachers, parents, and then individual/group counseling activities • Outcomes: assessed in terms of number of participants, their evaluations, what they learned, and how their school-related functioning has changed as a result

  19. Assessment within the Counseling Process • Second use of “assessment” refers to use of formal and informal data collection during counseling for academic, career, and personal/social functioning • Counseling-related data collection

  20. Assessments for Counseling • Essential to obtain in-depth understanding of assessment instruments and concepts • Must be aware of the criticisms of certain instruments that are often used in schools • Assessments used within the 3 domains: • Academic: help students to know their learning styles and strengths • Career development: help students further self-knowledge and match self-exploration with information about world of work • Personal/social: help students understand themselves better

  21. Individual Counseling • Commonly practiced school counseling approaches: • Adlerian counseling: provide insights into the student’s family dynamics • Solutions-focused brief counseling: engages students in considerations of when the problem is not such a big problem, then assists them in applying “what was working then” to now • Reality therapy: uses acronym WDEP • Wants of students • Direction of the student • Evaluation of the direction • Planning for change

  22. Using Creative Strategies and Multiple Intelligences in Counseling • Creative strategies: play, music, and art • Not age-bound • Multiple Intelligences can provide insight for how to effectively work with students • verbal, mathematic/logical, artistic, musical, naturalist, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and kinesthetic strengths • Look for counseling methods that fit the strengths of the students

  23. Group Counseling • Primary intervention • Participants will be able to learn about themselves, other people, life tasks, and authentic ways of relating in a safe, confidential setting • More effective than individual counseling to address the needs of students, especially high-risk

  24. Structured (Psychoeducation) VS. Process Groups • Structured/psychoeducational groups: counselor takes direct leadership of the group • identifying goals, presenting material with an assumed values orientation, selecting activities, and directing interaction

  25. Structured (Psychoeducation) VS. Process Groups • Process groups: rely on the learning that emerges from the group interaction and spontaneous experiences that occur as the members learn to negotiate the natural progression of all relationships • forming • storming • norming • performing • adjourning

  26. Implications and Considerations of Group Counseling • Advantages: • Developmental appropriateness • Efficiency • Expands counselor’s system awareness • Limitations: • Issue of confidentiality • Scheduling difficulties

  27. Peer Facilitators • Older students are selected and trained to act as peer facilitators, assisting counselors with: • Peer tutoring • Peer mediation • Peer helping • Orientation programs • Peer facilitation groups • Special training: • helping process, listening, the basics of confidentiality, and facilitation of

  28. Systems Thinking: Families, Schools, and Communities • Top 6 support assets: family support, positive family communication, supportive adult relationships, a caring neighborhood, a caring school climate, and parental involvement in schooling • Negative effects if developmental assets are missing • View all students from a holistic, naturalistic perspective • Members of interlocking and dynamic systems of social interactions • Intervention efforts aimed at students’ systems

  29. Selection of Counseling as an Intervention • Primary ways to work with adult partners: • Educating, consulting, leadership, and advocacy • Counseling is always an option if warranted

  30. Selection of Counseling as an Intervention • Essential issues to consider: • A student-focused problem • Time considerations • Training in family systems counseling if you are providing family systems counseling • Administrative support • Needs assessment data, program evaluation data, and processes that highlight problem solving rather than treatment • Availability of referral support • The location of the problem on the prevention-intervention-treatment continuum

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