Solution-Focused School Counselor

Shaping Professional Practice

Tom E. Davis, Cynthia J. Osborn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138132665
• eBook ISBN: 9781135058135
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This text highlights the indispensable role of school counselors today, namely as change agents in an increasingly complex and fluctuating school system. Informed by emerging standards of practice and current research, the book adopts the salutary perspective of solution-focused brief therapy as its foundation. It outlines practical and time-sensitive strategies for school counselors to use with students, parents, teachers, and administrators.

The Solution-FocusedSchool Counselor encourages readers to envision and proactively construct interactions with students, families, and staff that contribute not only to the formation of an exceptional school, but to the shaping of an effective professional practice. Blending current theory into practice, the authors have consulted research across a variety of disciplines and have related it in an understandable format. School counselors will find this book useful either as a professional resource to be read from cover-to-cover, or as a reference tool from which specific sections may be consulted.

This book is an excellent resource for school counselors and students alike. It is also useful for school psychologists and administrators as well as anyone interested in making a difference in the school setting.

1

CHAPTER

Introduction to Brief and Solution-Focused School Counseling

The popularity of brief or short-term counseling approaches in the 1990s can be explained in two words commonly found at the local grocery store or bank: “express lane.” Yes, it’s true—we hate to wait. The woman in front of us with nine groceries, not the required “eight-items-or less,” annoys us. The man in the drive-through bank line who makes three or four transactions on a Friday afternoon irritates us. And having to travel 45 mph on the highway angers us (especially when orange signs warn of doubling fines!). Let’s face it—we all want to get to where we’re headed quicker, sooner, and faster.

Cellular phones and pagers keep us immediately accessible: We don’t have to wait until we arrive home to get the call. Pentium processors and high speed modems now get us online instantly. And package carriers garner customers with ads for overnight and express delivery. No more waiting! We’ve come to expect (and, at times, demand) easy access and instant service. We hate to wait.

We especially hate to wait for solutions to our problems. Problems delay us. Problems keep us from moving forward. We get “caught” in traffic. We get “stuck” at the office. We’re “behind” in school work. So, when an opportunity presents itself for getting to our destination quicker, sooner, and faster, we’ll often waste no time in taking the bait and we’ll hit the ground running.

Brief or short-term counseling represents an opportunity to arrive at our goals and solutions quicker, sooner, and faster. It’s the “direct route” to our destination, not the “scenic route.” It helps us get to where we want to go in the least amount of time possible. It’s the “express lane” to get from problems to solutions!

No Quick Fix for Me, Thank You: Dispelling “Drive Through” Myths

Brief or short-term counseling is often (and incorrectly) thought of as quick-fix counseling in which clients are whisked through the counseling drive-through, impersonally delivered a generic packaged deal of “McScriptions” (terse therapeutic recommendations such as, “Don’t be such a whiner! Just get off your tail and do something, and then you’ll feel better!”), all for the purpose of saving time. Such an approach, it is believed, only patches up or bandaids client or student problems with little, if any, regard for the pressing issues with which the person is struggling. The individual is therefore left on the sidelines with little positive outcome.

A quick-fix understanding of brief counseling, however, is simply an inaccurate, prejudicial, and uninformed view. An intention of this book is to address such myths and to clarify the premise and goals of brief or short-term counseling approaches in the school setting.

The Time in Brief

Brief or short-term counseling often has been defined as counseling conducted in a short amount of time or in a limited number of sessions. Budman and Gurman (1988) referred to brief counseling as any counseling “in which the time allotted to treatment is rationed” (pp. 5–6). Durations of 25 sessions or less (Koss & Butcher, 1986) or a range from 1 to 20 sessions, with an average duration of about 6 (Bloom, 1992), have been proposed as the means by which brief counseling is defined. The majority of interactions a school counselor has with a student, therefore, could be considered brief counseling, due to the time constraints of the academic calendar and daily school schedules.

This temporal quality, however, is only one aspect of brief counseling, and does not fully capture its essence or intent. Not all counseling of limited duration is “brief counseling” (Steenbarger, 1992, 1994). In fact, brief counseling is regarded as “a heterogeneous set of interventions targeted to a broad range of clients and problems” (Steenbarger, 1994, p. 116).

It is a misconception, therefore, to define brief counseling exclusively as short-term; that is, brief counseling does not involve simply the limitation of total time in counseling services (de Shazer et al., 1986; Eckert, 1993). Such a limited definition prioritizes technique over process or person (Lipchik, 1994), and is ambiguous, for the very indication of “brief” duration is relative, depending on the criterion or the comparison (Donovan, 1987). According to duration alone, brief counseling could refer to (a) fewer sessions than standard, (b) a shorter period of time from beginning to termination, or (c) a lower number of sessions and a lower frequency of sessions from start to finish (Hoyt, 1995).

Despite the caution expressed here about defining or even conducting brief counseling exclusively in terms of time or duration, it is important to note that brief counseling is not “timeless” (Hoyt, 1991); that is, brief or short-term counseling cannot be divorced from an attention to the importance of time. Hoyt (1994) prefered the descriptor “time sensitive” when talking about brief counseling, which highlights the importance of making the most of each moment, without the constraints or “mandate” (Stern, 1993) of structured time limitations.

Brief counseling, therefore, is neither exclusively time-limited, such as in planned, predetermined, mandated, or fixed length-of-stay counseling services or programs; nor is it entirely free from temporal considerations and restrictions. In fact, short-term counseling conducted in schools or in community mental health centers may be unintentional, for example, the (inadvertent) by-product of efficient and effective counseling or the result of a student’s decision not to return for services. In such a case, counseling that is “brief” would be so named only in retrospect, a phenomenon referred to as brief counseling “by default,” as opposed to brief counseling “by design” (Budman & Gurman, 1988).

Beyond Time

Steenbarger (1992) proposed that brief counseling is best understood as “conceptually planned” counseling, which refers to “the intentional consideration of time limits throughout the change process, from treatment planning to management of the relationship and selection of interventions” (p. 404). His “Integrative Model of Brief Counseling” reflects this intentionality, as well as the parsimonious use of time and appropriate interventions.

The emphasis on intentionality and the wise use of time are primary characteristics of brief or short-term counseling. Students, let alone school counselors, do not have the time to sit down and thoroughly hash out problems and their solutions with someone. Working within time constraints is therefore essential in any school counseling setting, given the limited “windows of opportunity” that are available with students on a typical school day. Being mindful of and attending to the stages of brief counseling that Steenbarger (1992) outlined will assist in making the most of each moment with a particular student or a group of students. An essential component of brief counseling, therefore, is the intentional or purposeful therapeutic process, a process that is sensitive to the unavoidable time limits of real life, with the goal being the enhancement of positive change.

Brief counseling has been concisely defined as “counseling that takes as few sessions as possible, not even one more than is necessary …” (de Shazer, 1991, pp. ix), which McFarland (1995) regarded as “no more counseling than necessary” (p. 4). Eckert (1993) emphasized improvement when he defined brief counseling as “any psychological intervention intended to produce change as quickly as possible, whether or not a specific time limit is set in advance” (p. 241), a theme shared by Steenbarger (1992) in his statement that “brief work represents an intentional acceleration of those change ingredients found in all therapies” (p. 426).

Sullivan (1954) was an early proponent of such efficiency when he referred to “psychiatric skill” consisting “in very considerable measure of doing a lot with a very little—making a rather precise move which has a high probability of achieving what you’re attempting to achieve, with a minimum of time and words” (p. 224). That is the essence of brief or short-term counseling (amazing, isn’t it, that it was verbalized more than 40 years ago!)—doing a lot with very little: not skimping on services; not withholding important and humanistic care from the students who need it; rather, providing the most essential and helpful forms of care in as short an amount of time possible, because of one’s intentional and purposeful commitment to the positive change process. Cutting to the chase without skimping on concern and care for the student—this is brief counseling at its best.

Brief or short-term counseling, therefore, is really a client-centered and humanistic approach. This means, it is focused on respectfully addressing the needs of the student with a commitment to eliciting and identifying such needs and their solutions in an efficient manner.

Active Ingredients of Brief Counseling

Several authors have attempted to capture the key ingredients of brief or short-term counseling through the years, and a sample of these is depicted in Table 1.1. Koss and Butcher (1986) were some of the first to name specific characteristics, and these are frequently referred to today as the foundational descriptors of brief or short-term counseling. Bloom (1992) narrowed these to five components, which include the salient features of being structured, time-sensitive, active, and clearly focused. More recently, Koss and Shiang (1994) delineated five counselor actions, or “technical behaviors,” that are regarded as instrumental in brief counseling, which overlap and highlight the characteristics already outlined.

Specifically within the school setting, Bruce (1995) has developed a “Brief Counseling Model,” which relies on “four specific components necessary for successful therapeutic change” (p. 353). This model, illustrated in Table 1.2 is based on Steenbarger’s (1992) work, and it borrows key elements of the solution-focused approach namely, eliciting and building on the strengths, capacities, and talents of students, including “solutions previously attempted by the student, solutions suggested by friends or family, and solutions considered, but rejected” (Bruce, p. 355). In addition, Bruce makes specific reference in Step 4 to de Shazer’s (1985) proposition that the counselor may not necessarily need to know all the details or nuances of the presenting problem in order to construct a workable solution. A more thorough discussion of this model and the solution-focused approach is found throughout the book.

Table 1.1. Characteristics of brief counseling

Koss and Butcher (1986)

1. Time is limited.

2. Goals for counseling are limited.

3. A strong working alliance is developed.

4. The focus of counseling is maintained throughout the process.

5. There is a high level of counselor activity.

6. The counselor remains flexible.

7. Interventions are introduced promptly.

8. Assessments are conducted early and rapidly.

9. Clients are encouraged to express their feelings.

Bloom (1992, 1997)

1. Interventions are introduced promptly.

2. There is a relatively high level of counselor activity.

3. Specific but limited goals are established.

4. A clear focus for counseling is identified and maintained.

5. A time limit for the counseling process is set.

Koss and Shiang (1994)

1. The focus of counseling is clear and is maintained.

2. There is a high level of counselor activity.

3. The counselor remains flexible.

4. Interventions are introduced promptly.

5. Termination is addressed early and throughout the counseling process.

Bruce (1995)

1. Counselor and student establish a strong working alliance.

2. Counselor recognizes and uses the student’s strengths and resources.

3. A high level of counselor and student affective and behavioral involvement is achieved.

4. Counselor and student establish clear and concrete goals.

Wells and Phelps (1990) proposed a three-dimensional commonality of all brief counseling approaches, consisting of (1) restricted or rationed time, (2) a selected and maintained focus of therapeutic effort, and (3) the employment of tasks, both within and outside of sessions, to stimulate client change. Cooper (1995) considered these three elements as integral to any brief counseling ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Chapter 1 Introduction to Brief and Solution-Focused School Counseling
• Chapter 2 Brief and Solution-Focused Counseling
• Chapter 3 From Problems to Solutions: Changing the Mindset
• Chapter 4 Application to Individual Students and Groups
• Chapter 5 Working with Children of Challenge and Their Parents
• Chapter 6 The Solution-Focused School
• References
• Index