My Understanding of Person-Centred Counselling Essay

Carl Rogers (1902-87) was the founder of the client-centred or person-centred approach to counselling and therapy. (McLeod 2001)

1.1 Explain how and why person centered values must influence all aspects of health and social care work:

Rogers worked with many others in developing the idea that clients could heal themselves, if only the therapist provided ‘facilitative’ or core conditions of, ‘empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard.’

There are four main approaches to person centred practice, “Pathway” planning, “Maps” planning, “Person centred portfolios” (otherwise known as “Essential Lifestyle Planning”) and “Personal Future Planning.” Discussion will prove that “ each shares characteristics that explicitly emphasise the personal empowerment of service users, in which the principal direction for support generates from those for whom planning is being carried out.”(Langley, 2001) However the use different formats means that each approach focuses on different aspects and my comparison will note strengths and weaknesses, and how they are designed for implementation in different scenarios of person centred practice and planning.

As part of assessment of the older adult and other population’s module, I have been asked to write a piece on a person centred care model. As the name implies person centred care is delivering individualised care which meets the needs of that particular person, be they religious, emotional, physiological needs etc. As a person they are entitled to respect, dignity, compassion and autonomy, which are central to the concept of person centred care. ”The rights of individuals as persons is the driving force behind person centred healthcare” (McCormack, 2003). In 1991, the UN made explicit the Principles for Older Persons; these include independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment and dignity. These principles are closely

Cognitive-behavioural therapy is widely short-term and concentrates on enabling clients to deal with very particular problems. Often six weeks to six months sessions of course depending upon the problem it is pacifically goal directed and places great weight upon self-help as a long term coping tool that the client can take away with them and successfully use. Cognitive-behavioural therapy believes that clients can learn the wrong ways of developing and making sense of information during their cognitive development. This can often lead to distortions in the way they identify reality, it’s the job of the therapist to enable them to work this out.

Finding out the history, preferences, wishes and needs of an individual will contribute to their care plan, you would do this by asking and talking to the person concerned, or if they were unable to tell you this information, you could speak with their family. Ask the individual about their life, and what they used to work as etc, if they are able to tell you all of this, then you will learn a great deal about them and this will help you to offer support to them in the most appropriate ways. Residents can often find it hard to

When working with an individual it is important to uphold their rights to be fully involved in their own care, whilst adhering to legal requirements. It is also the individuals right to refuse any care, support or treatment they do not want. It is also essential that people not only give you their consent but also that they understand what they are consenting to and the implications of this. Gaining consent protects not just the career but the individual receiving the care and support as-well. If no consent is given then you cannot proceed with the care. It is illegal to pressure anyone into

This essay will reflect upon an incident that occurred whilst in placement at a Unit for Clients with behaviour and learning needs, and associated autistic difficulties. Clients are both sexes and range in age from four to eighteen. It will be undertaken, defining person centred care in relation to the incident, it will demonstrate awareness to roles and responsibilities of professionals in meeting the needs of the client and it will demonstrate the importance of inter-professional collaboration and discuss the issues that facilitate or act as barriers in this partnership.

The skills used in counselling, vary from model to model, here are definitions of the skills used in person centred counselling,

In the first part of this essay I will summarise the main features of humanistic counselling and the

The essay will evaluate the necessity and importance of the development of the core conditions in the counselling process and critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the person-centred approach on the counselling process.

“How do person-centred counsellors use the therapeutic relationship to facilitate change- and in what way (s) does person-centred therapy differ from other helping relationships?” word count: 2,495

Rogers was one of the first to incorporate the scientific method into psychotherapy in the early part of the twentieth century when he developed client-centered therapy. “There is nothing compartment mentalized about this method of counseling. It is not just counseling, because it demands the most exhaustive, penetrating, and comprehensive consistency” (Kirschenbaum, “The Life and Work of Carl Rogers” 155). That being said, Rogers believed in the establishment of a relationship between client and counselor which requires trust. Domination inspires domination, in order for trust to develop the therapist must put dominance aside (Anderson 610). Many psychologists during Rogers’s time and even a few today would argue that “it is naive to trust persons if you believe that they are by definition untrustworthy or behaviorally conditioned or corrupt or a mass of potentially destructive instinctual drives” (Thorne 66). Contrary to most psychotherapists of his time, Rogers hypothesized that the counselor’s, therapist’s or opposite person’s role was to help the other person become fully functioning. His reasons emphasized that, “humans are growth oriented and will naturally progress towards the fulfillments of their innate potential if psychological conditions are favourable” (Thorne 66). According to Rogers, a fully functioning

James was unable to gain recognition from his parents and began to feel like he fell short in comparison to his siblings, as he struggled with learning difficulties, seeing himself as “the black sheep” of the family. He describes feeling “dumb” as he was put in remedial classes and teased by his siblings, reinforcing these feelings even further. These experiences developed a core belief within James that he was inadequate, a failure, and that he did not fit in.