Institute Inbrief - 09/04/2014
Welcome to Edition 200 of Institute Inbrief! Just under 9 years ago, the first edition of Institute Inbrief was released. What started as small project for AIPC students is now Australia’s most popular counselling e-newsletter – with over 35,000 readers!
We would like to take this opportunity thank you, our valuable reader, for being an integral part of this milestone. Your avid interest in personal development, counselling and mental health is what drives our team to produce new and relevant content each fortnight. Thank you – we very much look forward to continuing our contribution to your ongoing learning.
To celebrate this milestone, in this edition we kick-off a very special series of articles focusing on common (and often pressing) challenges faced by Australian families. This topic is close to most people’s hearts, and we truly hope you will gain useful insights from each article.
In this edition, we focus on challenges faced by single-parent families due to death or separation. Further editions will explore topics such as blended families, families who experience domestic violence and families challenged by a parent working away from home.
Also in this edition:
- Watch free video lectures on YouTube
- Event: Linking Up for Kids Conference
- Articles and CPD updates
- Social media updates
- Upcoming seminar dates
Enjoy your reading!
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AIPC is Australia’s largest and longest established educator of Counsellors. Over the past 22-years we’ve helped over 55,000 people from 27 countries pursue their dream of becoming a professional Counsellor.
The Bachelor of Counselling is a careful blend of theory and practical application. Theory is learnt through user-friendly learning materials that have been carefully designed to make your studies as accessible and conducive to learning as possible.
You can gain up to a full year’s academic credit (and save up to $8,700.00 with RPL) with a Diploma qualification. And with Fee-Help you don’t have to pay your subject fees upfront.
Here are some facts about the course:
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AIP is a registered Higher Education Provider with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, delivering a three-year Bachelor of Psychological Science. The Bachelor of Psychological Science is accredited by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC), the body that sets the standards of training for Psychology education in Australasia.
APAC accreditation requirements are uniform across all universities and providers in the country, meaning that Australian Institute of Psychology, whilst a private Higher Education Provider, is required to meet exactly the same high quality standards of training, education and support as any university provider in the country.
Imagine Being Passionate About Your Work
And Assisting People Every Day Lead Better Lives
It’s rare these days to hear people talk about their work with true passion. You hear so many stories of people working to pay the bills; putting up with imperfect situations; and compromising on their true desires.
That’s why it’s always so refreshing to hear regular stories from graduates living their dream to be a Counsellor. They’re always so full of energy, enthusiasm and passion. There’s no doubt that counselling is one of the most personally rewarding and enriching professions.
Just imagine someone comes to you for assistance. They’re emotionally paralysed by events in their life. They can’t even see a future for themselves. They can only focus on their pain and grief. The despair is so acute it pervades their entire life. Their relationship is breaking down and heading towards a divorce. They can’t focus on work and are getting in trouble with their boss. They feel they should be able to handle their problems alone, but know they can’t. It makes them feel helpless, worthless. Their self-esteem has never been lower. They’re caught in a cycle of destruction and pain.
Now imagine you have the knowledge and skills to help this person overcome their challenges. You assist to relieve their intense emotional pain. You give them hope for the future. You assist to rebuild their self-esteem and lead a satisfying, empowered life.
As a Counsellor you can experience these personal victories every day. And it’s truly enriching. There is nothing more fulfilling than helping another person overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.
Free video lectures on YouTube
Simply click the links below to watch each of the lectures:
- Core Actions of Psychological First Aid (due to be released on Friday 11th May)
- Principles of Psychological First Aid
- Transference and Projection
- Romancing Our Shadow
- Supporting People with Chronic Pain
- Enhancing Resilience
- How Does Your Will Work?
- Understanding Addiction
- Spot the Narcissist
- A Brief Comparison of Psychologies
And while you are at the Channel, make sure you become a subscriber (by clicking the subscribe button located on the right-side of the page, under the main banner). As a subscriber of the AIPC YouTube Channel, you’ll also be the first to access future series and informative videos.
Finally, we would like to thank the series presenter, Richard Hill, for his contribution. Richard Hill (MBMSc, BA (Linguistics), DipProfCouns, MA (Social Ecology), MEd, DPC) is a psychotherapist at the Davis Health Centre in Sydney and a regular speaker at mental health conferences in Australia and around the world.
Event: Linking Up for Kids Conference
14 - 15 April 2014
Sydney, NSW, Australia
The Linking Up for Kids conference is inspired by the recognition that the health and education sectors each do terrific work to support, teach and care for children and youth. What is less evident is how much more effective they could be in working together to keep kids well, and to better meet their needs when they are not.
Sex offender therapy: A battle on multiple fronts
Working with individuals with sex offense convictions is a specialized area of counseling. There are also “specialties within the specialty” when factoring in the different venues for treatment, including programs in prison, in private practice (often with those on postprison supervision or probation) and in mental institutions.
The individuals within this population are generally quite different, and the dynamics are made even more complex when considering whether the offenders are adult males, adult females (yes, there are female sex offenders) or juveniles. The research on each population varies considerably. There is a paucity of research on female sex offenders, and research is still somewhat lacking (although growing) on the ever-complex juvenile offenders.
Click here to continue reading the original article via Counseling Today.
Using the FOCUS model to work with caretakers of adult children
Recently, a colleague shared the news that her adult daughter had been diagnosed with cancer. Her first reaction? “This cannot be true! There must be some mistake! How can this be?” – especially when her daughter had live such a healthy lifestyle.
From her first reaction of total disbelief, the mother moved on to trying to place blame. Had she, as her mother, failed to provide proper nutritional support when she was pregnant with her daughter? Did she drink too much coffee? Were the children exposed to household chemicals or pest control as she raised them?
Click here to continue reading the original article via Counseling Today.
Single-parent families due to death or separation
Welcome to this special series focusing on common challenges faced by Australian families. In this edition we will explore challenges faced by single-parent families due to death or separation. But before we dive into this subject, we encourage you to explore a little background information that will set the tone for the series.
First, we recommend you read the AIPC Article Trends and Statistics of the Contemporary Family to understand some of the emergent trends and statistical truths about the “modern family unit”. After you have read this article, return to this publication as we explore another background concept for the series: the functions of the family.
Functions of the family
If you are intending to use your helping skills to boost challenged family systems to greater workability, then one chunk of information is vital; you must know what functions a family should be performing for its members – and hopefully for all of society – when it is working well. Patterson (2002) has delineated four core functions by which we can separate the flourishing family systems from those units which may only be limping along, or worse, failing altogether.
Function One: Family formation and membership. At birth, we come into a particular tribe, the members of which we later come to call our family. Our early developmental tasks revolve around learning how to become an accepted member of the tribe. Survival literally depends on our ability to: (1) negotiate inclusion into the tribe; (2) persuade other members of the tribe to meet our needs; and (3) carve out for ourselves an individual sense of personal and social identity, from which we will derive a sense of belonging.
The capacity to successfully accomplish these tasks of membership, while not taking on too many of the tribe’s toxic beliefs, will determine our foundation of individual safety and give us a sense of purpose and meaning, but its importance goes beyond that. Achieving family formation serves the wider community by continuing the species or – in the case of overpopulated areas – controlling reproduction.
Function Two: Economic support. The tribe has a duty to its members to support them in a material sense. Even in non-human families, the mother dog has puppies sucking at her teats and the mother bird prepares the nest, bringing back morsels for the hatchlings. In the human family, economic support means supplying needs for food, shelter, clothing, and other resources necessary to grow and develop, and to conduct a healthy, happy life. Perhaps news broadcasts of starving children fleeing from drought-stricken, warring regions are so evocative because the thought of not having our most basic physical-material needs met strikes deep chords of compassion or even fear in our hearts.
Indeed, it is through the ongoing contribution of the family to our material sustenance that enables us, eventually, to give back. As well-nourished, cared-for human beings – even before we are adults in the working world – we are able to contribute meaningfully to our world, and we are less in need of being propped up with public resources, so society benefits, too.
Function Three: Nurturance, education and socialisation. Even when little ones are being physically provided for, they will not thrive if they are not nurtured. So important is this concept that a major hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico (in the United States) has for many years had a voluntary “infant cuddling” program. Newborns which must live in incubators for several weeks or even months (and whose mothers may have long since been discharged from the hospital) are given over to volunteer coddlers, who – through their gift of time spent holding and talking to the infants – help the neonates to thrive through the long periods of maternal absence.
Psychological nurturance, in the form of affection, caring interaction, and cognitive stimulation, lays the foundation for psychological, social, and spiritual development to occur. Interestingly in terms of family dynamics, this function serves not just the children in the family unit, as recipients of the nurturance, but also the adults, who through learning to provide the nurturance and socialisation are likewise enhancing their own psychological,social, and spiritual development. Embedded in the educative nurturance is the capacity – and responsibility – to instil in children the norms and values held to be important by the greater community. Thus in Function Three we see the family preparing children to take up productive adult roles in society and teaching them how to avoid antisocial behaviours. Obviously, the family serves the wider community through this function by protecting it from the harm that would occur were its members not socialised.
Function Four: Protection of vulnerable members. Individual family members who are young, disabled, sick, or otherwise in need of care can rightfully expect to look first to the family for protection until they are able to become more self-reliant. This fourth and integral function of protection both distinguishes a “family” from other informal social groupings and also is a litmus test of its basic functionality. That is: can a given family protect its members? Does it possess the resources and the will to shield the individuals in it from the harsher vicissitudes of life?
Obviously the more that the family can take on this function, the less society is called upon to do so. Paradoxically, in the chicken-or-egg-first question that is family/society effectiveness, the more affluent the wider community is, the more easily families in it can aggregate the resources that give them scope for protecting their members. Thus, it is true that to extend social support to a family sends assistance “down” the social hierarchy to its individuals, but also “up” the chain to the whole community. The primacy of the protection function of families can be seen in the fact that in developing and less affluent societies, there is sometimes no dole, no welfare state, and no expectation that the state will necessarily support someone should they stumble. But in these countries families tend to be especially resilient
The dynamics of transition: what’s at risk?
What does it mean to become a member of a family? Do you belong to a family because you live at the same address as others? Are you deemed a family member because of blood relationship? Adoption? Because someone you were related to married, and you got dragged along? Or do you experience family “membership” in a deeper way: a sense of roots, heritage, cultural legacy, and perhaps inherited talents and tendencies? Then again, might you have a sense of belonging to a family because they brought you up, providing for you, protecting you, and educating you? The answers to these questions impact on those things you might expect to be jeopardised if your “family” situation – however you define that – were to change. In this series, we will see how contemporary transitions create risk in each of the situations we explore.
Throughout the series, please keep in mind the four functions that families are meant to carry out, as detailed above. We’ll point out salient instances where a function may be at risk in the family situation being studied. In other instances, the dynamics in a given situation cross over several functions, and the family is in jeopardy on account of multiple factors. In all cases, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges of family transition by cross-referencing the dynamics at play (that is: what is happening) with the presumed functions of family (what ought to be happening). First, we explore the family who becomes a single-parent unit.
Single-parent families due to death or separation
If two people getting married and having children is the process of forming a family and thereby imparting a sense of membership, then divorce of the parents or the death of one of them is the process of family de-formation, and the question of where one belongs as a “member” becomes unclear. Especially in the case of separation, where the non-custodial (or less-often custodial) parent is still alive, but not a member of the household anymore, children may wonder who, exactly, their family members are and where they, the children, belong. Function One may need to be re-negotiated, as both children and custodial parent re-define how they get a sense of belonging and identity, given that the family “team” is now configured differently.
As to the death of a parent, there are few events more significant in the life of a family. Yet this one event probably holds greater diversity of meaning for its survivors than any other, depending on the age, level of individual development, and stage of the family life cycle. For a young child to lose a parent is unthinkable; it changes that child’s life forever. When the parent is an elderly adult with older adult children, that death is somewhat predictable and is a normal part of the life cycle.
For children to lose their caregiving mother has a different impact than to lose a father who may love them, but is not involved in their care. And the gender of the child losing the parent determines still other aspects of membership and loss, especially if “membership” in the tribe now will be connected to different role expectations, such as the unspoken expectation that young boys will become “the man of the house now that Daddy is gone” or that young girls will take over greater than age-appropriate domestic responsibilities “because Mummy isn’t with us anymore.”
With both death and divorce, it is not just Function One which goes awry. The whole question of Function Three - how remaining household members come to be socialised (re-socialised) - comes into play, and often calls for a radical (if unconscious) re-organising on the part of both the custodial parent and the children. It is crucial to outline the challenges, however, because the number of single parent households has more than trebled since the eighties (Carter and McGoldrick, 2005), with nearly a million lone-parent households in Australia in 2006, most of them headed by women (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010).
The issues that single mothers face differ significantly than those of single fathers. In this discussion, we focus more on the issues of single mothers, partly because they are usually the custodial parent in the case of divorce, and partly because they are more likely than fathers to be poor, struggling to fulfil Function Two (economic support).
Whether single by death or by divorce, the parent who is now raising the children alone faces an overwhelming task, often in the context of an unsupportive community. There is an overload of child care and household chores and limited time and energy for the parent to develop her own activities, or even meet her primary psychological needs. And, mostly, life is a struggle to make ends meet, let alone provide the “nice-to-do” luxuries, say for the children, that help ensure social acceptability. Beyond the day-to-day struggle, single parents fight the societal expectation that coming from a single parent household means that the children will be worse off. Yet studies which have accounted statistically for the overwhelming presence of poverty in lone-parent households show that, once eliminating that factor, differences in adjustment between two-parent and one-parent households all but disappear (Simons, 1996).
Thus, if we are supporting a single-parent household, we can take heart; it is possible for children to grow up in a family with only one parent present and survive intact. But they have a hard row to hoe, and here are some of the likely challenges that they will face.
Problems for the children. Commonly, children of lone-parent families, especially in cases of divorce, have suffered poor academic performance, low self-esteem, behavioural difficulties, and interactional problems with their peers (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994a). In research conducted over ten years, McLanahan and Sandefur (1994b) found that, other things being equal, teenagers who spent part of their childhood apart from their biological father were twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to become parents themselves before age twenty, and one and a half times as likely to be “idle” (defined as neither employed nor attending school) in their late teens and early twenties.
The authors found that single motherhood is what hurts, because it often means that Function Two of the family (economic support) cannot be implemented. Children are deprived of economic resources because many, if not most, single mothers tend to have low incomes. McLanahan and Sandefur found that low incomes and sudden drops in income are the most important reasons that children in single-mother families fare worse than other children, accounting for about half of the disadvantage in the question of graduation from university (or not).
Further, lone-parent households have fewer parental resources to go around. As cited above, the overwhelming amount of childcare, domestic chores, and – for many women – working hours combine to mean that the children get inadequate attention and guidance from the parent. It is not difficult to infer the disadvantage to children whose mother does not have time to help them with their homework, read to them, or ask about how their day at school went. Also, children need to be supervised in their time out of school, and working, overly-busy parents often do not have time to do this.
Finally, the lack of behavioural competency and social problems of the children are partly traceable to the fewer community resources that single-parent households often enjoy. That is, with lower income, they are likely to live in less affluent neighbourhoods, and associate with peers who have negative attitudes toward school. They are more likely to be mobile, changing residences frequently; this disrupts both academic work and the development of peer relationships (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994b).
Problems for the parent (mother). Most people, women in particular, want their relationships to succeed, so when the relationship does not work out (usually for a good reason, such as abuse, abandonment, or unreasonable conflict) both partners may face fallout from disappointment, loss, and censure from those around them for having “failed”. If there are children, the woman also faces criticism that she has failed at her “primary” mission: that of being a good wife and mother.
As noted, a woman often comes into a situation of needing to work longer hours for far less pay than what her household enjoyed with the man’s income. Beyond that she is often less emotionally supported than before, both for herself and in her role as a parent. All of this makes a single parent vulnerable psychologically (McLloyd and Wilson, 1990), meaning that she not only is limited in extending support to her children, who are also vulnerable, but that in addition, she is not receiving support for herself. Thus Function Four of protection to the vulnerable is not being fulfilled.
Turning to the social arena, we see that there are further problems for the single parent family. Perhaps more than many configurations of family, single parent households are highly influenced by their social context, whether it is supportive and enriching, or judgmental and isolating. Some families are lucky to have extended family support, with many relatives living nearby, or sometimes in the same home. In general, those women who are embedded in a solid network of social supports are less vulnerable (Carter and McGoldrick, 2005). This does depend, however, on the quality of the relationships. Sometimes extended family members are a source of stress, through criticism, loyalties to the father of the family, colluding (“triangling”) with the children, and sometimes further depleting the woman’s time and energy through requests for help of various sorts, without giving support in return.
The newly single mother – or father, for that matter – must factor in ways to allow ongoing involvement of the children’s other biological parent, although that can create numerous challenges. The other parent – say, the father – may not be interested in contact. If there is interest, however, the mother or custodial parent must work with potential feelings of resentment, irritation, and dislike, plus the sense that the other parent is troublesome and/ or irrelevant, to help the children have that all-important bond with that parent.
Those becoming single parents might need assistance in examining how their changed status will affect relationships with friends. Some people conclude that a single person will be uncomfortable in gatherings where everyone is paired up, and they thus fail to extend the invitation. Also, after a divorce, there is the dilemma for some friends of whether to include this partner or the other one in the social circle, as any invitation to one may be seen as disloyalty to the other one. Moreover, even if old friends are still available (which they are not if relocation has been part of the transition), there is the potential issue of whether the friends are sufficiently sensitive to the new problems of single parenthood.
Many single mothers find it difficult to reach out to former friends for help, for reasons of pride, feeling “failed”, not wishing to burden others, or fearing rejection. When women have not been well connected socially, they can be encouraged to begin establishing new socially supportive networks, but the reality of single parenting is that doing so takes precious time and energy. Many parents feel lucky just to survive the day, collapsing on the couch at the end of it. Going to some group or meeting would seem like just another chore to complete on the never-ending “to-do” list.
Problem for the whole family: the establishment of authority. Finally, when a new, single-parent family is forming, the head of that family has the crucial task of establishing authority as the head of the household. For men, doing so may not be an issue because typical gender roles assign to men the responsibilities of being the disciplinarian and head of the household. For women, however, it is frequently another story. Especially in cases where a woman comes into the relationship straight from living in her family of origin, not having lived independently, she may struggle with doing the disciplining and limit-setting that she relied on her partner to do. She may be further constrained by depression and a sense of loss after the breakup of the relationship or death of her partner.
Perhaps the most common error women make as they transition into a single-parent family is that they are too permissive with the children, trying in some way to compensate them for the disadvantages they believe the children have experienced. This can result in inappropriate tolerance of children’s acting-out behaviours, and leads to greater behavioural problems down the track. All children need the security of boundaries (structure), stability, and predictability (shown in consistency of parenting efforts).
Children going through a transition or otherwise distressed children need these qualities even more. Clear familial authority and boundaries are not only key elements for maintaining the family structure and thus, children’s wellbeing; they are essential for the mother’s sanity as well! At a basic level, children need to know who makes the rules, who is “in” and who is “out” of the family, and what is permitted. Although not easy, this aspect is crucial for laying the groundwork for the newly-formed lone-parent family to get along together (Carter and McGoldrick, 2005).
We have outlined many of the salient issues facing single-parent families as they transition from a two-parent household. Suffice it to say that it is possible for children of such families to adapt and grow into intact, healthy adults. It is possible, but it isn’t easy. Much work is needed on the part of all, and correspondingly, there is much scope for your input if you would contribute social support to such a family.
In the next edition we explore challenges faced by blended and step “remarried” families. We also encourage you to read the article Challenges of Same-Sex Couple Families. This article was published in a previous edition of Institute Inbrief, and hence will not be included in this series.
This article was adapted from AIPC’s MHSS Specialty Course “Supporting Challenged Families”. For more information, visit www.mhss.net.au.
References:
Australian households: The future. 4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, Dec 2010. Retrieved on 19 June 2012 from: www.abs.gov.au.
Carter, B., and McGoldrick, M. (2005). The expanded family life cycle: Individual, family, and social perspectives (third edition). Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon.
McLanahan, S. S., & Sandefur, G. (1994a). Growing up with a single parent. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press.
McLanahan, S. S., & Sandefur, G. (1994b). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Focus, 16:2, Winter 1994/1995. Retrieved on 4 July, 2012, from: www.ssc.wisc.edu.
McLoyd, C.C., & Wilson, L. (1990). Maternal behaviour, social support, and economic conditions as predictors of distress in children. New directions for child development, 46, 49 – 69.
Patterson, J.M. (2002). Understanding family resilience. Journal of clinical psychology, 58(3), 233-246. Retrieved on 19 July, 2012, from: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Simons, R. L. (1996). Understanding differences between divorced and intact families: Stress, interaction, and child outcome. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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The Institute has a list of recommended textbooks and DVDs that can add great value to your learning journey - and the good news is that you can purchase them very easily. The AIPC bookstore will give you discounted prices, an easy ordering method and quality guarantee!
This fortnight's feature is...
Name: Theories and Strategies in Counselling and Psychotherapy, 5th edition
Authors: Richard K. James, Burl E. Gilliland
AIPC Code: GILLILAND
AIPC Price: $92.10 (RRP $109.95)
ISBN: 978-020-534-3973
This is text that operates in “real time”. It puts the student directly into psychotherapy as it is being practised today through the latest theoretical research and delivery systems.
Six Principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Six basic principles form the foundation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. They work in conjunction with one another toward the main goals of effectively handling painful thoughts and experiences and creating a rich, vital life.
The principles are: Cognitive defusion; Expansion and acceptance; Contact and connection with the present moment; The Observing Self; Values clarification and; Committed action (Harris, 2006; Harris, 2007). We take a brief look now at what they entail.
What does resilience look like?
As a counsellor or other mental health professional, of course you help your clients deal with difficult life events when they come to your therapy rooms. But how do you boost their capacity to prevail over adversity when they are not with you?
Most of the time when mental health professionals talk about resilience, they are referring to psychological hardiness, primarily, and physical toughness secondarily. Yet the term “resilience” was first used in the physical sciences to describe the behaviour of a spring (Plodinec, 2009). In fact, the word “resilience” is derived from the Latin resalire, to spring back. In the 1970s and 1980s, the term began to be co-opted by ecological and psychological communities.
The ecologists used it to describe ecosystems that continued to function more or less the same in spite of adversity (Holling, 1973), and the psychologists noted that groups not changing their behaviour in spite of adversity were resilient ones (Masten, 1990). The engineering community also got in on the act, referring to physical infrastructure as being resilient if it was able to absorb and recover from a hazardous event (Plodinec, 2009).
Mental Health Academy – First to Knowledge in Mental Health
Get unlimited access to over 50 hours of CPD video workshops and over 100 specialist courses, for just $39/month or $349/year. Plus FREE and EXCLUSIVE access to the 10-hour Psychological First Aid program ($595.00 value).
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When you join our Premium Level membership, you’ll get all-inclusive access to over 50 hours of video workshops (presented by leading mental health experts) on-demand, 24/7.
You’ll also get access to over 100 specialist courses exploring a huge range of topics, including counselling interventions, communications skills, conflict, child development, mental health disorders, stress and trauma, relationships, ethics, reflective practice, plus much more.
You’ll also get FREE and EXCLUSIVE access to the Psychological First Aid course ($595.00 value). The PFA course a high quality 10-hour program developed by Mental Health Academy in partnership with the Australian Institute of Psychology and the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors, and framed around the internationally accepted principals of the NCTSN Field Operations Guide.
Benefits of becoming a premium member:
- FREE and exclusive PFA course ($595.00 value)
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- Videos presented by international experts
- New programs released every month
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Some upcoming programs:
- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
- A Constructive-Developmental Approach in Therapy: Case Studies
- Sitting with Shadow: Case Studies
- Emotionally Focused Therapy
- Counselling the Disabled: Introduction to the Issues
- Counselling the Disabled: A Look at What Works
- Recognising Spiritual Emergence
- Healing Spiritual Emergencies
- Spiritual Emergence: Case Studies
- Neuroscience, Mirror Neurons and Talking Therapies
Have you visited the Counselling Connection Blog yet? There are over 650 interesting posts including case studies, profiles, success stories, videos and much more. Make sure you too get connected (and thank you for those who have already submitted comments and suggestions).
VIDEO: Principles of Psychological First Aid
Psychological First Aid is a means of providing psychosocial support to individuals and families immediately after a disaster, terrorist or traumatic event, or other emergency. It consists of a set of helping actions which are systematically undertaken in order to reduce initial post-trauma distress and to support short- and long-term adaptive functioning. Based on the principle of “do no harm”, it is provided increasingly by members of the general population, although mental health professionals are almost always involved as well.
In this video, Richard Hill defines Psychological First Aid (or PFA), identifying its characteristics, and explaining why our modern world demands this level of assistance. This video consists of part 1 of a two-part series: we recommend you watch the companion video “Core Actions of Psychological First Aid” after watching this.
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"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
~ William Butler Yeats
Many students of the Diploma of Counselling attend seminars to complete the practical requirements of their course. Seminars provide an ideal opportunity to network with other students and liaise with qualified counselling professionals in conjunction with completing compulsory coursework.
Not sure if you need to attend Seminars? Click here for information on Practical Assessments.
Below are upcoming seminars available during the first semester of 2014.
BRISBANE (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 24-25/05
Communication Skills I: 21/06
Communication Skills II: 11/05
Counselling Therapies I: 31/05-01/06
Counselling Therapies II: 12-13/04
Legal & Ethical Framework: 04/05
Family Therapy: 15/06
GOLD COAST (9.00am – 5.00pm)
Communication Skills I: 17/05
Communication Skills II: 21/06
Counselling Therapies II: 23-24/05
Legal & Ethical Framework: 13/06
SUNSHINE COAST (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 31/05-01/06
Counselling Therapies II: 12-13/04
Family Therapy: 03/05
Case Management: 21/06
MELBOURNE (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 09-10/05, 13-14/06, 28-29/06
Communication Skills I: 11/04, 11/05, 15/06
Communication Skills II: 12/04, 17/05, 21/06
Counselling Therapies I: 12-13/04, 17-18/05, 27-28/06
Counselling Therapies II: 26-27/04, 24-25/05
Legal & Ethical Framework: 26/04, 31/05
Family Therapy: 27/04, 01/06
Case Management: 03-04/05, 07-08/06
DARWIN (9.00am – 5.00pm)
Communication Skills I: 14/06
Communication Skills II: 14/06
Counselling Therapies I: 12/04
Counselling Therapies II: 21/06
Case Management: 24/05
ADELAIDE (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 28-29/06
Communication Skills I: 17/05
Communication Skills II: 18/05
Counselling Therapies I: 24-25/05
Counselling Therapies II: 21-22/06
Legal & Ethical Framework: 03/05
Family Therapy: 04/05, 24/08
Case Management: 14-15/06
SYDNEY (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 02-03/05, 26-27/05, 27-28/06
Communication Skills I: 29/04, 29/05, 25/06
Communication Skills II: 29/04, 30/05, 26/06
Counselling Therapies I: 09-10/05
Counselling Therapies II: 10-11/04, 23-24/06
Legal & Ethical Framework: 12/05
Family Therapy: 30/04
Case Management: 16-17/05
LAUNCESTON (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 13/06
Communication Skills I: 16/05
Communication Skills II: 16/05
Counselling Therapies I: 27/06
Counselling Therapies II: 11/04
Case Management: 02/05
HOBART (9.00am – 5.00pm)
Communication Skills I: 15/06
Communication Skills II: 15/06
Counselling Therapies I: 13/04
Counselling Therapies II: 22/06
Family Therapy: 18/05
PERTH (9.00am – 5.00pm)
The Counselling Process: 03-04/05, 07-08/06
Communication Skills I: 10/05
Communication Skills II: 11/05
Counselling Therapies I: 14-15/06
Counselling Therapies II: 12-13/04
Legal & Ethical Framework: 18/05
Family Therapy: 24/05
Case Management: 31/05-01/06
Important Note: Advertising of the dates above does not guarantee availability of places in the seminar. Please check availability with the respective Student Support Centre.
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