The Importance Of Community Counseling

Integrated approach to counseling is when you combined theories to cover the clients’ feelings, cognitive patterns, and behavior (Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Pschotherapy 8e, 2009). Each theory focuses one of these key components of a client but in counseling you need to focus on each of these to fully help a client. The key to integrative counseling is to have multiple theories function in harmony (Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Pschotherapy 8e, 2009).

Every community mental health and local agency programs provide a needed service in the local community. Each program is important and provides everyone access to crucial mental health treatment and other needed resources. These programs provide services such as access to medication, emergency mental health services and counseling for everyone that do not have the means to pay for these services. Different centers provide specific services that are needed in a high-need area. One centers service may include group counseling, individual counseling, assessments, and pharmaceutical services at a low cost. Another center may provide services such as support groups, classes on different topics,

A mental health counselor is a counseling professional, whose duties involves helping individuals cope with difficult life events, managing mental illnesses, and referring patients to additional resources that can help them. Before they can start counseling, they need to follow their states specific requires. For instance, in Louisiana, one has to obtain a master’s degree from an accredited program, have the required hours of supervised practice and coursework, and pass the National Counselor Examination to be licensed and certified. In addition to receiving a license in this field, an individual has to complete an addition 40 hours of continuing education every year to renew their license. The Mental Health Counseling program, offered at Capella, would satisfy most, if not all, of the licensure requirements in Louisiana.

The Comprehensive School Counseling Program Notebook which follows the ASCA National Model third edition was created in School Counseling Programs. This notebook is divided into four components as directed by the comprehensive school counseling program: foundation, delivery, management, and accountability. The Foundation section includes my core beliefs, my vision, my mission, rationale, description, and goals of the program at Mountain Home Junior School. Delivery, Management, and Accountability (AR 1.2).

In this paper, we will illustrate the issues that present when providing counseling in a non-office, off-site setting. We will explore two different kinds of counseling that occur in a space that is not a traditional office including in-home counseling and the rise of wilderness programs. These two modalities both have a limited amount of research on their efficacy and the issues raised by having the counseling take place in a unique environment as compared to the traditional arrangement of counseling practices.

The population I am equipped to work with are couples and families. This is a population that I can empathize with very easily, a driving force in my counseling career and one very dear to my heart. My life experiences has led to a great desire to help save marriages when they can be saved, work with families and especially children from divorced families. Relationships is another area I would love to specialize in to grow in my career. Very little effort is placed on "how to" do relationships, how to grow into a great husband, a great wife or mold great children who will become great partners in the future. These areas will be my main focus points and maybe one day I can write a book on the subject.

The Council’s services are divided into four main areas. The first one, Behavioral Health Clinic for Children and Families, includes therapeutic services like screenings and assessments, individual, family and group therapy, play therapy and school advocacy as well as prevention and outreach services like Kids Camp, community education and conferences on topics like fetal alcohol syndrome and keeping infants and toddlers safe. The second area is Substance Abuse Counseling and Assessment Programs which is the largest of the four areas. It includes outpatient treatment and counseling services, OSR screenings for state funded inpatient treatment,

Julian Lambert is a case manager for the newly open office of Eastern Carolina Human Services Agency, Inc. in New River shopping center. Although he is not a professional social worker, he is well aware of the needs of the population and the importance of providing and linking them with resources. He gave me useful information and his insightful perspective about the resources available and missing in the community, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the area.

Poverty and mental health correlate significantly, people with economical disadvantages have inconsistent access to proper mental health agencies and resources. With poverty increasing the number of mental health related concerns FCS has made a commitment to offer services to individuals and families who have expressed the need for services but are unable to pay for requested sercices. FCS exists to fill the counseling needs of the residents of Northern Utah; notably 95% of the time the population served by FCS could not afford to pay for the services received.

An additional barrier to multicultural counseling is client access to care. The utilization of mental health services by minority groups is low in the United States (Smith, Domenech Rodriguez, Guillermo, 2011). The fact that minority groups underutilize mental health services is attributed to systemic issues such as lack of affordable transportation, inconvenient office hours, demographic mismatch, language barriers, economics, and lack of clinics in neighborhoods with predominately ethnic minority groups (Smith, Domenech Rodriguez, Guillermo, 2011). To address these issues, multiculturalism in the mental health services field has committed to equipping more culturally competent counselors, encouraging community-based counseling efforts for easier access, increasing bilingual and culturally diverse counselors, as well social advocacy. Despite their recognition, these challenges are difficult to remedy and remain a problem for clients of minority groups.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current programing at The Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County (RCC), as well as the current measures it uses for evaluating the services they provide. The program will be described with an emphasis on the counseling and case management programs, which currently do not have a method of gaining the clients’ perspective of how well a counseling or case management session went. A needs assessment for the Counseling and Case Management Programs will be provided along with suggested improvements and an improved evaluation tool suggestion.

A school counselor’s role is vital in many schools across America. Many students see their counselor, to work on any emotional stressors, academic changes and challenges. This may include, interventions, group therapy and changes in class schedule, but sometimes with all the implementations given, students do not succeed in school. Perhaps one needs to take a closer look at the programs being implemented and its success rate. In addition, a counselor should guide itself using the ASCA (American School Counselor Association) to provide evidence based practices in schools.

It is evident in the world today that there is a need for guidance and counseling. There are many statistics of issues the world faces that prove the need treatment. For example, 35% of persons who marry end up divorced. 40% of children live in a home where a father is not present. By age 18, 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by someone they love and/or trust. Approximately every 20 minutes a person commits suicide within the United States (Clinton, 2005). This list goes on and is even found within the church. Professional counseling and lay Christian counseling have found a way to help individuals overcome these issues though certain techniques and methods. These techniques and methods are often adopted from secular psychologists such as Carl Rogers who founded Client-Centered Therapy. While both counseling groups have a goal to help individuals overcome their issues, should Christian counselors, specifically, accept secular professional counseling techniques?

'Reflecting on the content of the module and drawing on your personal experiences, identify and discuss what is essential in the helping relationship’.

Peer counseling is giving advice to a problem to a person who is equal to you either in rank, status or ability. I this case we are focusing on teenager (Persons of ages between 13 to 19 years). Sadly, a considerable number of teenagers find counseling boring but its time they change their mindset and join the league. While life has no guarantees, it is all about yourself and how you impact on someone`s life. While many teenagers may wonder how to start counseling, it is all about interest and believing in yourself. Young as you may be, full of vitality at the threshold of puberty, and give yourself some dignity by joining this noble practice. You can do this by first joining the peer educators club in your school.