This book provides readers with an in-depth knowledge on how to deliver effective counseling to individuals experiencing social inequalities and injustice through equipping counselors with the skills necessary for becoming agents of change. The author in his 13 chapters examines the social, cultural, and economic systems responsible for perpetuating injustice and inequality with illustrations underlying the importance of counselors’ acceptance of their professional, ethical, and moral responsibility in working with clients in transforming social justice systems. The book is divided into two parts where chapter contents include: challenging educational inequalities: school counselors as agents of social justice; gay and lesbian social …show more content…
Courtney C. Lee is also a past president of both The American Counseling Association and the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development respectively.
Scholarly Evaluation:
Lee (2007) in chapters 2, 8 and 10 examined the themes: advancing social justice by challenging socioeconomic disadvantage; promoting ethnic/racial equality through empowerment based counseling; and social justice and counseling ethics. Having a limited access to adequate funding inevitably places individuals’ lives and future into an uncomfortable position where they have fewer choices and access to benefits which can allow them to become frustrated. Ethnic minorities have a higher level of poverty existing among them when compared to other ethnic counterparts. According to the 2002-2003 U.S. statistics, children and women are at a higher risk than men of being in poverty where women in comparison to males are at a disadvantage in terms of earnings with their wage constituting 76% of the average wage for males. Consequently, “being an ethnic minority, being female, or being a child puts one at greater than average risk of living in poverty” (p. 17). Poverty has also been found to be correlated with several health and mental health conditions.
Similarly, individuals of lower socioeconomic status experience higher rates of morbidity and mortality in almost all disease categories when compared to those of
Why are higher income and social status associated with better health? If it were just a matter of the poorest and lowest status groups having poor health, the explanation could be things like poor living conditions. But the effect occurs all across the socio-economic spectrum. Considerable research indicates that the degree of control people have over life circumstances,
Socio-economic class or socio-economic status (SES) may refer to mixture of various factors such as poverty, occupation and environment. It is a way of measuring the standard and quality of life of individuals and families in society using social and economic factors that affect health and wellbeing ( Giddens and Sutton, 2013). Cockerham (2007 p75) argues: ‘Social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest predictor of health, disease causation and longevity in medical sociology.’ Research in the 1990s, (Drever and Whitehead, 1997) found out that people in higher SES are generally healthier, and live longer than those in lower SES.
It is imperative the school counselors develop a culture of equity in their school, and that their counseling program reflects this philosophy. This paper will analyze four inequity scenarios that were shown in the video: Equity Focused School Counseling, and the role that a counselor can take to close these inequity gaps.
Due to the increase in racial and ethnic diversity in the United Sates there is a great need to provide counseling interventions that cater for social issues that are attributed to the racial and ethnic diversity. Presently, efforts are being made to implement social justice advocacy strategies and interventions into counseling practices. Thus, counselors are encouraged to be agents and advocates for social justice, oppression, and discrimination (Ratts & Hutchins, 2009). At the forefront of social justice counseling approaches, is the need to empower the oppressed or marginalized individual by confronting injustices and inequalities that affect the individual at the systemic level (Pedersen, Lonner, Draguns, Trimble, & Rio, 2015).
Different researches do believe that there is a link between social class and health. It is a statistical impression and also it has been argued that there isn’t really a pattern in social class, age and peoples employment that has had an impact on people’s health inequalities.
First, there is Jim Taylor, Hospital CEO, District 16; second, Tondra Young, Clinical Lab Supervisor, District 24; lastly, Corey Anderson, Floor Technician, District 21. The population of each district decreases in average income, education level and life expectancy than its preceding district, beginning with district 16, Jim Taylor’s district. District 16 has an average combined household income of approximately $120,000/ annually. In this district, 65% of the population has a college degree and the life expectancy in this district is 82 years. Whereas, Tondra Young’s district, district 24, has an average combined household income of $70,000/annually and 15% of the population has a college degree. The life expectancy of district 24 is 75 years, that’s 7 years less than district 16. In district 21, Corey Anderson’s district, the average combined household income is less than $50,000/ annually and only 5% of the districts population have college degrees. Consequently, the life expectancy of district 21 is 70 years, 5 years less than district 24 and 12 years less than district 16 (Adelman 2008). The results of this study are indisputable: there is an obvious correlation between social/economic status and health status. As each districts average income and education level decrease, average life expectancy coincides. This leads to the next question: why does social and economic status so greatly influence health status?
Evidence show that people from lower class backgrounds and ethnic minority’s backgrounds are more likely to suffer more health problems to the majority ethnic group this shows a pattern of inequality.
Interview paper with a Counselor (Rebecca Alexander), and a Social Worker (Mina McVeigh). This interview is for Mrs. Scott’s online class.
Starting this course in August, I didn’t realize the power that multicultural counseling had instilled in it. The fact that its central focus is around social justice and equality is a characteristic our society much needs today. Throughout the duration of this class, I learned about multicultural counseling as a whole, new theories that can be applied specifically to different racial/ethnic minorities, the ACA code of ethics, and who I want to be as a future counselor.
How can counselors work to lessen the effects of racism and discrimination that have impacted Native Americans and Asian Americans? (1
People always praise our world is beautiful and peaceful, but they ignore the injustices still exist and some of them without good solutions. Although people believe social injustices are unfair and will bring pain and tear, they are used to treating them as air because they never experience these unequal things. Likewise, the discrimination occurs both in upper class and regular class between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. For example, there was an obvious discrimination happened in the speech of the Republican nomination for president election. At that time, Donald Trump, who was one of the speakers, believed that force illegal immigrants repatriation can be the best way to make America great again. Because Mr. Trump recognized these immigrants only bring drugs and crimes to the U.S., and they occupied a large number of jobs which made the unemployment rate increasing currently. In addition, he said if he becomes the president, he will declared three principals and two of them can be social injustices. Firstly, America has to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border that stowaway cannot enter America illegally. Secondly, the laws must be fully enforced illegal immigrants to go back to Mexico. In addition, Mr. Tramp is not the only person who gets rise to injustices, but the social injustices and discrimination also happened in various aspects.
Health inequalities are preventable and unjust differences in health status experienced by certain population groups. People in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to experience health inequalities than people in higher socio-economic classes. Health inequalities are not only found between people of different
The aim of this essay is to examine the influence that socio-economic status has on an individual’s health.
Social justice advocacy is an important aspect of the collaborative model. The ASCA’s code of ethic state “school counselor must advocate for equitable school and school counseling program policies and practices for every student and all stakeholders, including use of translators and bilingual/multilingual school counseling programs material that represents all languages used by families in the school community, and advocate for appropriate accommodation and accessibility with disabilities (Erford, 2015, p. 175).”
Though the concept of social injustice is universal in nature, the experience varies with each person. Factors like a person’ race, or gender can further influence the severity of the injustice; victims caught in the overlap between discriminations often go unrecognized by the law and society. Many people recognize the names Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice as African Americans who were murdered by local police. But names like Michelle Cusseaux, Tanish Anderson, and Meagan Hockaday often receive less feedback even though they are also murdered African Americans. The only distinction between the sets of names is gender. Even within racial injustice, discrimination is present between genders as some cases get national