Introduction to Counseling Skills for the Helping Professions Working With Diversity

Counselling skills are a vital part of the health and human service practitioner's toolkit. There are many times and places - from formal assessments to brief discussions at someone's home - where a productive and helpful conversation can help both practitioner and client. This key text introduces the essential skills for grounding such conversations, emphasising that helpful change is typically co-constructed between counsellor and client through conversation.Starting with the basics of active listening and curiosity, and moving towards more advanced practices for setting and achieving goals, this text foregrounds practice and emphasises skills for helping people to draw on their own expertise, framing them in an ethic of care. Without overlooking the importance of the therapeutic relationship itself, the text explores how helping conversations can be understood as a collaborative process for achieving preferred outcomes through constructive dialogue with a skilled facilitator. It prepares readers for work with diverse clientele, presenting the practice of counselling as inherently cross-cultural, consisting of conversations that construct meaning and experience within a socio-cultural context. Providing a thorough introduction to a range of counselling skills, this text is suitable for students and practitioners in human and health services. Examples of conversations and clients' stories will be threaded throughout the text along with reflection points, discussion points and chapter summaries, all designed to aid learning.