When organization set up counseling provision, there are four

different counseling arrangements:

1. For their employees: Workplace counseling is increasing more

and more companies, both the private and public sector, are paying
counselors to work with their employees. Counseling provision can
take the form of either in-house counseling, where counselors are
also employees of the organization, or external provision where
Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) provide counseling.

2. For their consumers: Most Higher Educational establishments,

for example, run counseling services for their students.

3. For members of the public: For example, a local authority

fund a Youth Counseling Agency. Here, young people up to a certain
age can refer themselves, or be referred, for counseling that is paid
for by the local authority.

4. Specifically to engage in counseling: As a counseling

agency it offers counseling that is either paid for by its private
customers or by some other group, for example, doctors, local
authorities, etc.

EFFECTIVE COUNSELING

Effective counseling is a two way street. It takes a cooperative

effort by both the person receiving counseling and the counselor.
And it takes a commitment to make sometimes-difficult changes in
behavior or thinking patterns.

Once you think you’ve found the right counselor, how do you tell if
your relationship is effective? Here are some signs to look for:
While you are responsible for making changes in your life, an
effective counselor can help pinpoint the obstacles in your way.
If you have control over these obstacles, a counselor can suggest
behavioral changes to help you overcome them.
If these obstacles involve factors outside of your control, your
counselor can teach you coping mechanisms that will foster your
well being in trying circumstances.
An effective counselor can identify negative thinking patterns that
may be feeding feelings of sadness, depression or anxiety.
By encouraging you to build upon personal strengths and
suggesting skills that can overcome self-inflicted feelings of
hopelessness, a counselor can help you develop a more positive
attitude.
A good counselor can assist you in making positive changes in your
relationships with others, helping you recognize behaviors that may
be contributing to a troublesome relationship. Your counselor can
teach you effective ways of communicating, clearing the way for
honest exchanges with people in your life who may be causing you
emotional pain.
You can determine whether your work with your counselor is
effective if you begin to obtain insights about your own thoughts
and behaviors that may have eluded you before. Over time, you
should be able to recognize patterns in the way you act, trace their
sources and identify stumbling blocks to your happiness that you
may have unwittingly created.
The end result is personal growth that empowers you to control
your life and enjoy positive, life-affirming relationships with others.

An effective counselor:
o understands depression and how to lift it
o helps immediately with anxiety problems including trauma or
fear related symptoms
o is prepared to give advice if needed or asked for
o will not use jargon or ‘psychobabble’ or tell you that
counselling or psychotherapy has to be ‘painful’
o will not dwell unduly on the past
o will be supportive when difficult feelings emerge, but will not
encourage people to get emotional beyond the normal need to
‘let go’ of any bottled up feelings
o may assist you to develop your social skills so that your needs
for affection, friendship, pleasure, intimacy, connection to the
wider community etc. can be better fulfilled
o will help you to draw and build on your own resources (which
may prove greater than you thought)
o will be considerate of the effects of counseling on the people
close to you
o may teach you to relax deeply
o may help you think about your problems in new and more
empowering ways
o uses a wide range of techniques as appropriate
o may ask you to do things between sessions
o will take as few sessions as possible
o will increase your self confidence and independence and make
sure you feel better after every consultation.

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COUNSELLING

 Principles to help assure effective counselling of youth or young
people:

Avoid giving advice only and do not impose your personal

values.

Listen to the young person

Help her to evaluate her own situation and behaviour

Work with her to identify possible solutions to the problem(s)

Be client centered

Respect the young person and encourage her ability to help

herself, trust in herself, and take responsibility for her actions
and decisions.

Young people are individuals.

o Emphasize their good qualities and potential.

o Respect their rights as people.

o Promote the exercise of their capacity to think and make

decisions.

o Involve male youth wherever the opportunity arises.

o Accept the young person and do not judge them.

o Maintain confidentiality and privacy.

o Ensure counseling on other referral services is available to the

young person.

Effective Dynamics

Research has found the following dynamics to increase the

effectiveness of counselling:

• An emotionally charged, confiding relationship between patient

and therapist

• Warmth, support, and attention from the therapist in a healing

setting

• A positive therapeutic alliance between patient and therapist

• A new rationale or conceptual scheme offered with confidence by
the therapist

• The passage of time

• Installation of hope and expectancy

• Techniques consistent with patient expectation and efficacy

The Core Conditions for counseling:

 
The three main core conditions that Carl Rogers considered essential
for effective counselling are:
1.      Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR)
2.      Empathy
3.      Congruence
However in Roger’s paper “The necessary and sufficient conditions of
Therapeutic personality change” he lists six conditions in total.
1.      Two persons are in Psychological contact.
2.      The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of
incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.
3.      The second person, whom we shall term the therapist is
congruence or integrated in the relationship.
4.      The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the
client.
5.      The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the
clients internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate this
experience to the client.
6.      The communication to the client of the therapist’s empathic
understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree
achieved.
No other conditions are necessary . If these six conditions exist and
continue over a period of time, this is sufficient…(Rogers Reader p221)
Unconditional Positive Regard, Empathy & Congruence are the
counsellors or therapists conditions needed to facilitate change. Without
these conditions being present a healing relationship cannot form. In the
six conditions above we see that the client also has to ‘play ball’,
Psychological contact is needed. If the client does not want to be there
they are free to withdraw and the counselling processes cannot
continue. The client too it seems needs to realise that there is
something not working for them in their lives.
So what are these conditions? Roger's three core conditions for
therapeutic change as explained by the good man himself:
"The first element could be called genuineness, realness, or
congruence. The more the therapist is himself or herself in the
relationship, putting up no professional front or personal facade, the
greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a
constructive manner. This means that the therapist is openly being the
feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. Thus, there
is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced
at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to
the client.
The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for change is
acceptance, or caring, or prizing--what I have called 'unconditional
positive regard.' When the therapist is experiencing a positive,
acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment,
therapeutic movement or change is more likely to occur. The therapist is
willing for the client to be whatever immediate feeling is going on--
confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. Such caring
on the part of the therapist is non-possessive. The therapist prizes the
client in a total rather than a conditional way.
The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic
understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the
feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and
communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best,
the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or
she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but
even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive,
active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but
very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet
listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for
change that I know."
 (Rodgers, 1980)
There is a lot packed in to the above descriptions, at a glance it does
not seem much but upon examining them closely the basic framework
of Rogers counselling work is described.

THE BASIC CONDITIONS OF COUNSELING

To support client's disclosure of meaningful issues during the initial disclosure

stages of counseling, the counselor maintains an attitude of receiving the client,
often referred to as the core condition of counseling. Three of these conditions -
empathy, positive regard and genuineness - were described by Carl Rogers
(1957) as the significant and sufficient conditions of personality change. The
fourth condition, concreteness, is the counselor's skill focusing the client's
discussion on specific events, thoughts and feeling that matter, while
discouraging a lot of intellectualized story telling.

Empathy

Rogers (1961) defined empathy as the counselor's ability "to enter the client's
phenomenon world -- to experience the client's world as if it were your own
without ever losing the as if quality tailing how it is perceived in client-centered,
psychoanalytic, behavioral and cognitive, postmodernist".

The important components are:

o Empathic rapport - primarily kindness, global understanding, and

tolerant acceptance of the client's feelings and frame of reference.

o Experience near-understanding of the client's world - what it is like to

have the problems the client has, to live in the life situation the client
lives in ... what it is like to be him.

o Communicative attunement - the therapist tries to put himself or herself

in the client's sic shoes at the moment, to grasp what they are trying to
consciously communicate at the moment, and what they are experiencing
at the moment.

Empathy focuses on two major skills: perceiving and communicating. Perceiving

involve an intense process of actively listening for themes, issues, personal

constructs, and emotional. Themes may be thought of as recurring patterns, for

example, views of oneself, attitudes towards others, consistent interpersonal

relationship patterns, fear of failure, and search for personal power. Issues are

questions of conflict with which the client is struggling:

"What do I want for my future?" Relative to each theme or issue a client will have
emotional of elation, joy, anger, anxiety, sadness, confusion, and so forth.
Understanding the emotional investments is a critical part of the perceptual
element of empathy.

In the communication component of empathy, the counselor says something that

tells the client that his or her meaning and feelings have been understood. If a
counselor listens carefully and understands well but says nothing, the client has
no way of knowing what is in the counselor's mind. Sometimes the client may
even misinterpret a counselor's lack of response as a negative judgment about
what they have, said. It is often through hearing his or her meanings and feelings
repeated that the client takes another look at life events and begins to perceive
them differently.

Counseling Processes

Effectively communicated empathy has a number of desired effects in the initial

disclosure stage of counseling.

First, the energy required to listen actively expresses caring and affirmation to
the client. The counselor is saying, "I care enough for you that I want to invest
everything into understanding clearly".

Second, the feedback that comes from the counselor's contact with significant
themes helps the client see his or her own themes more clearly. This helps the
client understand himself/herself more deeply and re-examine relevant
perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs.

Third, such responding establishes expectations about the nature of the

counseling experience. Counseling is conveyed to the client as a process that
involves attending to oneself, exploring, searching, and perceiving oneself more
clearly. Counseling is established as an experience involving work, not simply
conversation. Indeed, the counselor's work is to stimulate the client's work of
self-discovery.

A fourth effect is that is the counselor is careful to offer a level of empathy that is
consistent with the client's level of readiness, the client will feel safe to continue
the counseling experience. The client learns that nothing bad will happen as a
result of communicating and that something helpful is likely to occur.

A fifth effect is that empathy communicated to the clients that the counselor has
social expertise to offer. Empathy is not routinely experienced in the events of
daily life. A counselor who can make empathic contact establishes
himself/herself as having some special skill, which in turn helps the client
experience a sense of optimism about future sessions.