Background of the study

The Collins Dictionary of Sociology defines counseling as “the process of guiding a person during
a stage of life then reassessments or decisions have to be made about himself or herself and his or her
course”. Counselors are professionally trained and certified to perform counseling. 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-inperformed choices in resolving
an emotional or interpersonal problem.

As a discipline, it is allied to psychology and deals with normal responses to normal events,
which may sometimes create stress for some people who, in turn, choose to ask for help and support.
Counseling is provided by family, friends and wise elderly. When these providers prove insufficient
counselors become the choice. Counselors exist in a wide range of areas of expertise: marriage, family,
youth, student and other life transitions dealing with managing of issues of loss and death, retirement,
divorce, parenting and bankruptcy.

Counseling is widely considered the heart of guidance services in schools. In the school context,
counseling is usually done as individual or group intervention designed to facilitate positive chance in
student behavior, feelings and attitudes. As a process, it involves two sides: an individual or group who
needs help and a mature professionally trained counselor. Through methods adapted to the needs of
the client(s), the trained counselor helps in defining a problem and acquires initiative, determination,
courage, and efficiency to solve that problem. It helps clients understand and clarify their views of their
life space and to learn to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well-informed choices
and through resolution or problems of an emotional or interpersonal nature (Burks & Steffire 1979).

Counseling also utilized appraisal and assessment to aid counseling by gathering information
about clients through the use of psychological tests and non-psychometric devices. Psychometrics is a
branch of psychology that deals with the design, administration, and interpretation of quantitative tests
for the measurement of psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, interests, and personality
traits. The underlying assumption is that the variable being measured is a fixed and unchanging attribute
of a person. The intent of psychometric testing is to use a number of carefully calibrated short or
multiple-choice questions to accurately measure an individual’s aptitude or potential in a particular
area, for example, reading or arithmetic. Tests employed are strictly standardized and administered by a
professionally trained psychometrician.

Counseling is not to be confused with psychiatry, which is a branch of general medicine that
deals with the treatment of the mentally ill by medically-trained professionals using clinical
interventions including drugs, surgical procedures, and non-physical approaches.
Context and the Basic Concepts of Counseling

Counseling is affected by the context and the surrounding factors. They are explored here as
part of the basic concepts of counseling that a very important to consider. The National Institute of
Health presents a very comprehensive understanding of the context of counseling as follows
(http://archives.druabuse.gov/TXManuals/BSFT/BSFT3.html). First of all, context, as defined by Urie
Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979, 1986, 1988), includes the peers, the culture, the neighborhoods, the
counseling, client, the counselor, and the contextual and the process factors. Much influence though is
within the family as being the primary context in which the child learns and develops and likewise for
socializing of children and adolescents.

Peers as Context. Friends attitudes, norms, and behaviors have a strong influence on
adolescents. Many personal issues are often introduces to the individual by their peers. Parents can
have much influence over their adolescent children. Critical family issues involve family roles, both
positively and negatively. In most cases, the impact of parent influence can help counter the negative
influence that peers have on the adolescents issues.

Neighborhood as Context. The interactions between the family and its neighborhood as
immediate context are also important to consider. A family functions within a particular neighborhood.
The behavioral problems in this particular neighborhood require that families work against crime and
social isolation that may impact them. This is much easier in countryside communities where a
community network of parents, teachers, 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,
neighborhood context is an important consideration in counseling. It can both introduce additional
strengths or consideration in counseling. It can both introduce additional strengths or challenges or
parenting and resources 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 neighborhoods are all
bound together by a cultural context that influences them all as individual members. Therefore, the
cultural context is a major consideration in counseling. Extensive research on culture and the family has
demonstrated that so much influence on the individual child and family is exerted by the cultural
contexts (Santisteban et al. 2003; Szapocznik & Kurtines 1993). 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 counselor 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
determinations for indepence (Corey 2991). Therefore, effective counseling has to take into full
consideration the culture of the client and that of the counselor and other stakeholders can all affect the
nature of counseling.
 Counseling as Context. The national Institute of Health recognize counseling itself as a context.
Regardless of a therapeutic approach in use, the counseling situation in itself is a context. There is a
deliberate specific focus, a set of procedures, rules, expectations, experiences and a way of monitoring
progress and determining results in any therapeutic approach (Corey 1991). Counseling can therefore be
effected by the counseling context.

From the counseling context, other success factors such as client factors, counselor factors,
contextual factors, and process factors should be managed well so as to contribute toward the success
of the engagement.

1. Client Factors. The client factors are everything that a client brings to the counseling
context. He or she is not a passive object receiving treatment in the manner of a traditional
doctor-patient situation. The clients bring so much to the counseling context and therefore
it remains imperative that they are considered as an active part of the process. Very then,
the expectations and attitude of the client define the result of a counseling process depends
so much on the client.

2. Counselor Factors. The personality, skills, and personal qualities of a counselor can
significantly impact the outcomes of the counseling relationship (Velleman 2001). The
counselor’s personal style and qualities can make the interventions successful. The
conditions for self-restoration or experience of self-empowerment in a client are some
qualities that a counselor usually brings about. The experience of positive or negative
conditions can be attributed to the counselor. This may be amplified or aggravated by the
choice of counseling methods that the counselor uses in this or her practice; this makes
counseling both a science and also an art.

3. Contextual Factors. The context in which counseling takes place can define the outcomes.
Counselors are therefore concerned with the environment and atmosphere where to
conduct the sessions. There are ideal contexts 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 counseling process and procedure. A client has to
feel comfortable and positive. Ideally, counseling should take place in a quiet, warm, and
comfortable place away from any distraction. Unless the counselor 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 counseling undertaking.
(Vellemean 2001) presents the following six stages, which for him apply to all problem areas
in the process of counseling.
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 develop.
c. Helping to set goals. This involves setting and managing goal-directed interventions.
d. Empowering into action. This means fostering action 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 proves is being directed by the client and toward
independence.

Goals and Scope of Counseling

Counseling is aimed at empowering a client. The general goal is to lead an individual client or
group to self-emancipation in relation to a felt problem. At some stage in the proves, the client should
attain insight and understanding of oneself, achieve better self-awareness and look at oneself with
increased self-acceptance and appreciation, and be able to manage oneself positively. Client
empowerment means that they develop skills and abilities that require self-management and improved
motivation toward actions that are good for ones self and develop a positive outlook toward the past
leading to some sense of closure and attainment of relative inner and outer harmony resulting to
improvement in relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and others.

The scope of counseling is wade. Essentially, it involves application of some psychological

Principles of Counseling

The principles of counseling can be found in the basic process of counseling since they govern
each and every step: developing trust; exploring problem areas; helping to set goals; empowering into
action; helping to maintain change; and agreeing when to end (Velleman 2001). Counselors are to set
aside their own value system in order to empathize with their clients. Since the objective of counseling is
to provide support in dealing with issues of concern, counseling is effective when it is performed with
clear objectives that include providing some degree of advice, reassurance, release of emotional
tension, clarified thinking, and reorientation. Counselors must try to keep this principle in mind at all
times in order to be effective.

Advice. Counseling may involve advice-giving as one of the several functions that counselors
perform. When this is done, the requirement is that a counselor makes judgments about a counselee’s
problems and lays out options for a course of action. Advice-giving has to avoid breeding a relationship
in which the counselee feels inferior and emotionally dependent on the counselor.

Reassurance. Counseling 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 a sense of relief that may empower a
client to function normally again.

Release of emotional tension. Counseling provides clients the opportunity to get emotional
release from their pent-up frustrations and other personal issues. Counseling experience shows that as
persons begin to explain their concerns to a sympathetic listener, their 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 the counselor and counselee are
talking and therefore becomes a logical emotional release. As this relationship goes on, other self-
empowering results may take place later as a result of developments during the counseling relationship.
Clarified thinking encourages a client to accept responsibility for problems and to be more realistic in
solving them.

Reorientation. Reorientation involves a change in the client’s emotional self through a change in
basic goals and aspirations. This requires a revision of the client’s 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 counselor’s job is to recognize those in need of reorientation and facilitate appropriate
interventions.

Listening skills. Listening attentively to clients is the counselors attempt to understand both the
content of the clients problem as they see it, and the emotions they are experiencing related to the
problem. Counselors do not make interpretations of the clients problems or offer any premature
suggestions as to how to deal with them, or solve the issues presented. Good listening helps counselors
to understand the concerns being presented.

Respect. In all circumstances, clients must be treated with respect, no matter how peculiar,
strange, disturbed, weird, or utterly different from the counselor. Without this basic element, successful
counseling is impossible. Counselors do not have to like the client, or their values, or their behavior, but
they have to put their personal feelings aside and treat the client with respect.

Empathy and positive regard. Carl Rogers combined empathy and positive regard as two
principles that should go along with respect and effective listening skills. Empathy requires the counselor
to listen and understand the feelings and perspective of the client and positive regard is an aspect of
respect. For Rogers, clients have to be given both “unconditional positive regard” and be treated with
respect.

Clarification, confrontation, and interpretation. Clarification is an attempt by the counselor to

Transference and countertransference. Other advanced principles deal with transference and
countertransference. When clients are helped to understand transference reactions, they are
empowered to gain understanding of important aspects of their emotional life. Countertransference
helps both clients and counselors to understand the emotional and perceptional reactions and how to
effectively manage them.

Core Values of Counseling

Certain values are considered core to counseling and are reflected and expressed in the practice
of counseling. All counselors are expected to embrace these and similar set of core values as essential
and integral to their work. These values are:

1. Respect for human dignity. This means that the counselor must provide a client unconditional
positive regard, compassion, non-judgmental attitude, empathy, and trust.

2. Partnership. A counselor has to foster partnerships with the various disciplines that come
together to support an integrated healing that encompasses various aspects such as the
physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. These relationships sould be of integrity,
sensitivity, and openness to ensure health, healing and growth of clients.

3. Autonomy. This entails respect for confidentiality and trust in a relationship of counseling and
ensuring a safe environment that is needed for healing. It also means that healing for any advice
cannot be imposed on a client.

4. Responsible caring. This primarily means respecting the potential of every human being to
chance and to continue learning throughout his/her life, and especially in the environment of
counseling.

5. Personal integrity. Counselors must reflect personal integrity, honesty, and truthfulness with
clients.

6. Social justice. This means accepting and respecting the diversity of the clients, the diversity of
individuals, their cultures, languages, lifestyles, identities, ideologies, intellectual capacities,
personalities, and capabilities regardless of the presented issues.
 From such core values, Ethical Principles of Counseling are broadened. The following principles
contextualize the core values in action. They form the foundation for ethical practice as expressed by
The New Zealand Association of Counselors (Ethical Principles for Counselors at http://www.nzac.org.nz/
code_fo_ethics.cfm).

Counselors shall:

1. Act with care and respect for individual and cultural differences nd the diversity of human
experience.

2. Avoid doing harm in all their professional work. Actively support the principles embodied in
the Treaty of Waitangi (a formal agreement between the British Crown and Maori signed on
Febuary 6, 1840 at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, which technically made over 500 Maori
chiefs to become a British Colony starting with the initial 43 Northland Chief, see
http://www.newzealand.comm/int/feature/treaty-of-waitangi/).

3. Respect the confidences with which they are entrusted.

4. Promote the safety and well-being of individuals, families, and communities.

5. Seek to increase the range of choices and opportunities for clients.

6. Be honest and trustworthy in all their professional relationships.

7. Practice within the scope of their competence.

8. Treat colleagues and other professionals with respect.