John Barletta

Supervision for school counsellors: when will we get what we really need?

This paper addresses the issues associated with providing quality supervision for school counsellors. The variety of tasks that are required of school counsellors makes it essential that appropriate supervisory support is provided by the employer. Clinical supervision should be carried out by a counsellor who has training in supervision methods and techniques, as well as clinical experience in the tasks being supervised. Administrative supervision can be conducted by a member of the school administrative team. School counsellor competence can be developed in the workplace with the support of a colleague or supervisor until expertise develops. It is accepted that supervision is a crucial part of the professional support for counsellors. Bernard and Goodyear (1992) suggest that supervision serves three basic and important purposes. First, supervision ensures that those entering the profession have appropriate fundamental skills, second, it enhances the functioning of counsellors, and finally, it ensures the quality of service to clients. The supervisor needs to be competent not only in the process of supervision and the specific issues within the educational setting, but also aware of the particular preference of style school counsellors have for supervision, which research has found tends to be quite directive (Usher & Borders, 1993).

Counselling Outcomes Attributable to the Working Alliance

There is a multitude of counselling theories that have gained respectability for their theoretical and practical contributions to the profession. Although such theories have been instrumental in developing useful therapies, there remain significant differences in their interventions and techniques. Debates flourish over which school of counselling is better and which contribute to the best positive outcomes. Research has confirmed that there is no significant amount of outcome difference between the varying schools and that there is not one therapy that is superior in contributing to quality outcomes. A critical basic question has resurfaced in recent times; what makes counselling effective? If each school of counselling is done differently and uses different techniques, how then does each work? Part of the explanation comes from the “working alliance.” The working alliance that comprises the bond, goals and tasks that form a trans-theoretical view will be reviewed and explored with a focus on their application to counselling.

Promote or Perish: Ensuring the Survival of Guidance Counsellors

During consecutive terms as President of the Queensland Guidance and Counselling Association, the first author routinely made public addresses where the survival and promotion of the Counselling profession was explored. Following such speeches, Guidance Counsellors would typically tell stories about the poor regard with which their role was held within their system and asked what they could do to increase their identity, profile and status. The second author, in eighteen years as a Guidance Officer in a different state, also came to learn that embedded within such interactions and questions were anxieties about job security and concerns about the public perception of the relative professional value of our role. It would be possible to write a paper that reflected that gloom, but we decided it would be timely and more useful to consider what could be done to increase the likelihood of professional survival. In addition to the climate existing in the world of Guidance, we are aware of the advent of Nurse Counsellors, Behaviour Teachers, Pastoral Carers, Home-School Liaison Officers, School-based Police, Chaplains and Welfare Workers within the education context. It has been the placement of these additional personnel within schools which has added to the unease of Guidance Counsellors, with what many believe is usurping some of the their role.

A solution-focussed approach to time-limited counselling

Counsellors routinely work in situations with students, parents and colleagues, where they need to use interpersonal helping and counselling skills. This function has been recently compounded by the emergence of multiple demands which place a new set of challenges on counsellors. Given that many counsellor training programs do not include time-limited counselling techniques, counsellors have traditionally drawn on more problem-focussed, longer-term theories when helping others. This has not always been appropriate or successful. Traditional counselling theories suggest that only highly trained counsellors should be involved in interpersonal helping, simultaneously placing a major emphasis on the clinical nature of problems. This paper presents a relatively new approach to counselling that does not delve intrusively into the past, and is not restricted to professional counsellors. Solution-focussed brief counselling techniques lend themselves well to the education context, and with appropriate attention, can be utilised by counsellors who will become more intentional and f acilitative in their daily interactions.