Helping Professions

7 Key excerpts on "Helping Professions"

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  eBook - ePub

  An Introduction to Helping Skills

  Counselling, Coaching and Mentoring

  • Jane Westergaard, Author(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  The Skilled Helper, uses the term ‘helping’ in a generic sense to describe those who use counselling and helping skills as a central element in their work. This includes counsellors, psychotherapists and so on, but also encapsulates other professionals – mentors, support workers, paramedics, teachers and social workers, for example – who are not necessarily engaged in therapeutic interventions, but are working alongside others (patients, pupils, clients) in a supportive and helping context. Nelson-Jones makes a distinction between counsellors and helpers, citing helpers as ‘paraprofessional or quasi-counsellors, those who use counselling skills as part of other primary roles, those engaged in voluntary counselling and helping, and those who participate in peer helping or support networks’ (2012: 6). Cameron suggests something slightly different, going further by offering a more comprehensive insight into what constitutes a ‘helping profession’:

  The Helping Professions – social work, health and welfare work and community work, to include just a few fields of endeavour – comprise an essential field of practice in most countries. Practitioners interact with clients across the full range of health, family, youth, justice, housing and education service sectors in most societies. (2008: 2)

  Activity

  Take a moment to focus on a particular institution that you think might employ ‘helpers’. It could be a school, a hospital, a care home, a prison or a social services department – or somewhere else which has the primary concern of working in some capacity with people. Now make a list of all the roles in that institution which you think have ‘helping’ as their focus.

  I am sure that you were able to name a number of roles that included helping as their primary focus. For example, in the case of schools or other education establishments today, you are likely to come across learning mentors, school counsellors, learning support assistants, teaching assistants, pastoral support workers, pastoral managers, educational social workers, and others whose primary task is to support children and young people in their learning and more broadly in managing their young lives. But would you consider that teachers also engage in helping relationships with their pupils? The testimonial below, from Carly, an English teacher in a secondary school, offers an enlightening insight.

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  Foundations of Professional Psychology

  The End of Theoretical Orientations and the Emergence of the Biopsychosocial Approach

  • Timothy P. Melchert(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  Given the confusion and problems associated with the lack of clarity surrounding the nature, scope, and purposes of the profession, a definition of professional psychology is proposed below that more clearly specifies these factors. This definition integrates components of the official definitions noted earlier while emphasizing the perspective of professional psychology as a health care profession that aims to meet the behavioral health needs of the general public. To be clear, this definition begins by emphasizing the applied nature of professional psychology as a profession that is based on psychological science and professional ethics. It then goes on to describe the fundamental purpose of professional psychology when viewed as a health care specialization. It also incorporates a biopsychosocial emphasis, the importance of which will become clearer in the next three chapters. To be thorough, it also notes that the field is composed of general and specialized areas of practice.

  A Proposed Definition of Professional Psychology

  Professional psychology is a field of science and clinical practice that involves the clinical application of scientific knowledge regarding human psychology and professional ethics to address behavioral health needs and promote biopsychosocial functioning. As a health care specialization, it provides psychological services to meet the behavioral health and biopsychosocial needs of the general public. It includes general as well as specialized areas of practice.

  Discussion

  One might argue that meeting the mental health needs of the general public is the obvious role for professional psychology—why is it even important to point this out? This definition, however, is quite different from the APA CoA definition that emphasizes providing psychological services without any specification of the purpose of those services. Specifying the purpose of the services (i.e., meeting the behavioral health needs of the public) has several critical implications. If the profession is defined as simply providing psychological services to the public, then a professional psychologist can learn one of the available theoretical orientations and offer services based on that orientation to individuals who request them. From this perspective, the profession is defined primarily as a service industry where patients need to take responsibility for their choices regarding whether to purchase particular services. For example, an individual concerned about some depressive symptoms can seek out a variety of treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, online positive psychology interventions, antidepressant medication, or over-the-counter St. John’s wort. From the perspective of a service industry, the legal principle of caveat emptor

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  An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy

  From Theory to Practice

  • Andrew Reeves(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Framework. From BACP’s perspective, the counselling professions are counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, mentoring, pastoral care and the judicious use of counselling skills.

  This latter point is an interesting one, in referring back to the point made before about the use of counselling skills – or perhaps communication skills – often being a common thread running across the work of different groups. Counselling skills are also successfully employed by other allied professional groups, such as social workers, nurses, teachers, advocates, etc., in their own work. McLeod and McLeod (2011) provide an engaging account of the use of counselling skill across a range of professional groups.

  As the Ethical Framework continues to evolve and develop through its subsequent revisions (at the time of writing the Framework is in a stage of revision), the scope of practice, i.e., how each activity is differentiated from each other, potentially will provide exciting new opportunities for professional groups to develop more evidence-based and coherent training opportunities for skills development, and for those skills to be subsequently recognised. For example, as a qualified social worker, my additional counselling skills training was never formally recognised as a discrete skill set within its own right; it was essentially professionally ‘invisible’.

  The emergence of counselling and psychotherapy as disciplines

  When we begin therapy with a new client, it is important that, at some stage of the therapeutic process, we find out a little bit more about who they are, their context and where they have come from. Some modalities emphasise the importance of this more than others. Some therapists take very specific steps in taking a client history, while others allow the information to emerge during the course of therapy. However, there would be fewer therapists who would maintain that history isn’t important at all. The more we can understand about the background to something, the more we are able to see its current presentation in a more informed context.

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  eBook - ePub

  Cross Cultural Awareness and Social Justice in Counseling

  • Cyrus Marcellus Ellis, Jon Carlson(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2

  THE HELPING PROFESSIONAL AS AN ADVOCATE

  Amie A. Manis, Shunda L. Brown, and Matthew J. Paylo

  A major focus of the Helping Professions has been to promote intra-psychic change in clients, often with an implicit goal of facilitating clients' adaptation to the social environment. While assisting clients to change is indeed within the realm of the helping professional, advocacy aimed at eliminating injustices in the social environment is as well. The advent of multicultural counseling, rooted in the civil rights movement in the united States and recognized as the fourth force in counseling, challenged the Helping Professions to examine their own theories and practices for dominant cultural prejudices and biases. This internal examination has not only led to helping professionals reclaiming our role as advocates, but also to important clarifications about that role.

  Specifically, researchers and practitioners have begun to explore and better grasp the impact of the social environment on mental health relative to a wide array of bio-psycho-social characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, religious/spiritual orientation, and socioeconomic status (SES). Sadly, these bio-psycho-social characteristics have often contributed to the social marginalization of individuals and groups as a result of prejudice and oppression. An advocacy orientation encompasses an understanding of the dynamics of oppression, the importance of environmental context and change with respect to mental health, and the role of both the client and the helping professional as agents of environmental change (Toporek, 2001).

  This chapter explores the role of the helping professional as an advocate for social justice. The chapter is divided into five major segments. The first section provides a snapshot of advocacy in the Helping Professions. The second section defines key concepts related to advocacy. The third section presents and discusses the advocacy and social justice competencies. The fourth section discusses the multiple roles and characteristics of helping professionals as advocates in terms of practice and research. The fifth and last section identifies resources available to helping professionals and educators for enhancing our advocacy competence.

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  Counselling Psychology

  • Victoria Galbraith(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  chapter 1 , this volume). Throughout much of this history, the practice of therapy was largely private and took place with relatively little oversight by state bodies, though voluntary professional organisations have long held some responsibility for the practice of their members. However, counselling psychology practice in the 21st century takes place within the context of state regulation, a well-informed consumer society, greater technological complexity, and a wide variety of demands on the practitioner’s time, energy, and skill (Carroll & Shaw, 2016).

  The Helping Professions have done and continue to do a great deal of good, in part due to the commitment, skill, and good motives of individual therapists. Unfortunately, the history of the Helping Professions is also replete with examples of the misuse of the power of the helper. The intimacy and relative privacy of therapeutic relationships , and the power inherent in the therapist role, can make it easier for therapists to take advantage of their positions of power and the vulnerabilities of clients, whether deliberately or otherwise. For many years, therapy professions have, in effect, regulated themselves through bodies such as the British Psychological Society (BPS), United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Since 2009, practitioner psychologists in the UK have been regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC ). Psychologists not offering services to the public (such as those who work solely in teaching or research) do not need to be registered with the HCPC.

  Professional practice guidelines (BPS and HCPC)

  To practice as an applied psychologist in the UK, one must be registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist. The seven Practitioner Psychologist ‘domains’ regulated by the HCPC are clinical, counselling, educational, forensic, health, occupational, and sports and exercise. As such, these are legally protected titles, and can only be used by practitioners who are registered with the HCPC. This arrangement is intended to maintain the integrity of the profession, and to ensure that the public can trust that anyone using these titles is competent to practice to the appropriate standards. It is no longer strictly necessary to be chartered with the British Psychological Society, given that registration of psychologists was taken on by the HCPC in 2009. However, the BPS and its Division of Counselling Psychology continue to work on behalf of counselling psychologists and thus membership of the BPS can mean further support to develop and thrive throughout one’s career (Blair, 2016; and see chapter 13

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  Becoming a Helper

  • Marianne Corey, Gerald Corey, Marianne Corey(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Each of these professional specialties has a different focus, yet all have in common working with people. Much depends on what you want to do, how much time you are able to invest in a program, where you want to live, and what your other interests are. At the undergraduate level, human services programs train practitioners for community agency work. Human service professionals generally carry out specific roles and functions under the supervision of clinical social workers, psychologists, and licensed counselors. At the master’s degree level, students can choose among various types of programs, some of which include school counseling, mental health counseling, addiction counseling, rehabilitation counseling, counseling psychology, clinical psychology, couples and family therapy, and clinical social work. Each specialization has its own perspective and emphasizes different roles and functions for practitioners. Regardless of which of the Helping Professions interests you the most, you are likely to discover many different positions within an area of specialization. Do not become overly anxious about making the “right decision” or delay making any choice because you cannot decide which career or program to pursue. View your professional life as a developmental process, and explore new possibilities as you gain additional work experience. Overview of Some of the Helping Professions As you read about the various specialty areas of practice described in this section, think about the characteristics that fit best with your own expectations. Each specialty has much to recommend it, but you probably will find yourself drawn more to one than to the others. The professional organization for each specialty is described, and we have provided contact information for these organizations to facilitate further inquiries about membership, conferences, and the code of ethics of the organization.

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  Mental Health Policy and Practice Today

  • Ted R. Watkins, James W. Callicutt(Authors)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER Personnel The Professionals and Their Preparation JAMES W CALLICUTT DAVID H. PRICE This chapter focuses on the traditionally recognized core mental health pro-fessions: psychiatry, nursing, psychology, and social work. Other important patient care professions involved in the provision of mental health services have been clearly acknowledged. For example, Mental Health, United States, 1992 contains a section on developing areas of practice that includes discussions of marriage and family therapy, clinical mental health counseling, and psychoso-cial rehabilitation (Dial et al., 1992). In this chapter, we will discuss staffing in mental health organizations (emphasizing the core professions), followed by overviews of social work, mental health nursing, psychiatry, and psychology. Staffing As shown in Table 5.1, among the core mental health professions, registered nurses are most numerous (77,635), followed by social workers (53,375), psychologists (22,825), and psychiatrists (18,181). Each of these professional groups showed numerical increases over the times reported in the table—that is, 1972, 1978, 1986, 1988, and 1990. Whereas all staff positions increased by 50% from 1972 to 1990, professional patient care staff expanded by 170%. 5

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