Counselling relationship

CHCCSL003 Facilitate the counselling relationship and process

This unit is about supporting clients to identify and work though concerns, and to manage the overall counselling process to its conclusion. It applies to individuals who work with clients on personal and psychological issues within established policies, procedures and guidelines.

 

How you will be assessed

You will be assessed through:

 

Practical

You will be assessed in the workplace under industry operating conditions with:

  1. use of suitable facilities, equipment and resources, including client information
  2. scenarios that involve complex interactions with real people in face-to-face situations where candidate and client are physically present in the same room
  3. scenarios that involve problem solving.

You need to show that you have:

  1. facilitated the counselling process for at least 3 different clients with varying presenting issues, in at least three sessions per client
  2. facilitated client sessions using all aspects of the counselling process:
    1. identifying concerns
    2. working through concerns
    3. monitoring the counselling relationship
    4. followed processes to bring the counselling process to an end on at least two occasions.

Show your assessor your workplace and the forms and procedures. Explain how it works as you go. Your assessor may ask you any questions on how it works. Most organizations have clear procedures.

 

Interview/assignment questions

  1. What are the legal and ethical considerations:
  2. What legal and ethical considerations apply in the counselling relationship, and how these are applied in individual practice? How they applied in organisations? In your answer, consider international, national, state/territory, and local legal and ethical codes, for the following:
    1. codes of conduct/practice
    2. discrimination
    3. duty of care
    4. human rights
    5. mandatory reporting
    6. practitioner/client boundaries
    7. privacy, confidentiality and disclosure
    8. records management
    9. rights and responsibilities of workers, employers and clients
    10. work role boundaries – responsibilities and limitations
    11. work health and safety
  3. Describe three different agency and organisation models of counselling and intervention.
  4. the counselling process, including:
    1. what clients have a right to expect
    2. principles of person-centred practice
    3. purpose of counselling
    4. how counselling has evolved as a helping relationship
    5. place of counselling within the helping services
    6. scope and nature of the counselling relationship, including professional limitations
    7. impact of own values on the counselling relationship
  5. Describe psychological, physical and economic obstacles to the counselling process.
  6. Describe the signs that a counsellee should be referred to someone else.
  7. What other referral options are available to you in your organization?
  8. Describe the structure of key stages of a counselling session, and techniques for managing each stage. In your answer, cover each of the following:
    1. introduction and establishment of relationship
    2. body (getting the client’s story)
    3. issues identification and exploration
    4. options and plan for change
    5. session closure
  9. Describe the role of the counsellor’s self-awareness in counselling, including:
    1. One’s role within the organisation
    2. The limits of competence and responsibility
    3. One’s personal strengths and limitations
    4. One’s individual needs for support and supervision
    5. One’s impact of own values and beliefs on capacity to be non-judgemental.

Note: Your assessor may also ask you a variety of what if questions.

 

Detailed requirements

1. Support clients to identify concerns

  1. Follow the client’s story and stay with their perspective to assist the client to feel comfortable and express their concerns freely
  2. Explore the client’s presenting issues and establish their nature and depth, giving attention to the possibility of underlying issues
  3. Identify and promptly deal with situations requiring immediate action
  4. Support clients to identify their primary concerns in relation to the presenting issues and to prioritise concerns on which to work
  5. Recognise indicators of client issues requiring referral and report or refer appropriately in line with organisation requirements

 

2. Support clients to work through concerns

  1. Identify and work with uncertainty and ambivalence of clients
  2. Support clients to experience and process difficulties
  3. Draw attention to, and discuss parallels and links in client’s experience as appropriate
  4. Identify and implement interventions that have meaning for the client’s immediate situation and that are most likely to facilitate client understanding and actions
  5. Support client to identify and use known and previously unknown strengths
  6. Explore perceptions of client’s feelings by reflecting back, clarification and review
  7. Assist clients to become aware of underlying issues where appropriate and begin to identify ways of dealing with them
  8. Acknowledge and work with changes in client’s life as appropriate

 

3. Monitor the counselling process

  1. Monitor and review the counselling process with clients to ensure it remains of value
  2. Proactively identify and work on threats and disruptions to the counselling process with clients
  3. Review and compare own and client’s perceptions of the process and provide suggestions and advice in response
  4. Address any tension between client’s hopes and expectations and the reality of resource limitations
  5. Facilitate change at a pace the client can tolerate and assimilate
  6. Recognise and assess the appropriateness of ending the current counselling
  7. Acknowledge, value and work with individual uncertainty in the counselling relationship
  8. Apply ethical codes of conduct in addressing counselling dilemmas

 

4. Bring the counselling process to an end

  1. Enable client to identify when the process is approaching its conclusion
  2. Enable client to identify, acknowledge and evaluate what is and is not changing, both in the counselling process and in their situation and understanding
  3. Use the ending process to enable client to understand the nature and impact of earlier issues
  4. Use boundaries of the counselling relationship to assist the ending process
  5. Plan, structure and contract endings appropriately with client
  6. Support client’s sense of autonomy during the ending process
  7. Inform clients about any opportunities for further support
  8. Identify unresolved issues and discuss further work if appropriate
  9. Complete documentation and reporting according to organisation requirements

5. Other.

  1. Manage tasks and contingencies on the job.
  2. Follow Commonwealth and State/Territory legislation, Australian/New Zealand standards, and industry codes of practice.