Summary Of Sandra Lee's Approach To Counseling
Sandra Lee your thought on the approach for counseling the disabled community was insightful. I can agree with you that this community’s approach to counseling is very different and it depends on the situation of each client. I wanted to share some information I found about counseling individuals with disabilities. According to Brian Guyton, in the past, people with disabilities were considered less than full members of society and viewed as incapable of making decisions. He also shared recommendations for counselors who service this community. In order to effectively work with clients with disabilities, it’s important for a counselor to thoroughly examine him/herself to identity one’s own beliefs or assumptions about these issues. Educating
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one’s self and simply asking the client about the disability and its related concerns helps improve a counselor’s understanding of the client’s concerns helps improve a counselor’s understanding of the client’s condition. A counselor may wish to help family members to develop a more positive orientation towards the situation through reframing or by using a problem-solving approach. When working with individuals with disabilities, perhaps the most important factor to consider is that these clients are people first. Their disability may contribute to some difficulties they seek help for. However, it should not always be the sole focus of counseling. It is important to address the person’s disability, but not to dwell upon it (Guyton, 2015).
Angela Boyd your thoughts on the competence of being a good counselor which includes having awareness, knowledge, and skills made me reflect on one of my experiences working with a clients who was disabled.
Working in the field of human services I come in contact with individuals with disabilities. I recently had a client that suffered a stroke over 6 years ago and he lost the ability to speak complete sentence and no use of the right side of his body. He could write everything down on paper, but the only words he could verbally say was “it’s like this”. After several meetings with him, the bottom line was that he wanted to be his own guardian and handle his own affairs. After explaining to him why he has a guardian and what that means, he was even the more persistent in coming by my office two or three times a month to write down on paper the same thing about handling his own affairs. The approach that I had to take was to convince his guardian to do another psychological evaluation. Needless to say, that he was still found incompetent but his persistent’ challenged me to look beyond his physical disability and have empathy on the fact that he has lost his independence. According to Lynne Shallcross, seeing potential and not the disability is important when counseling individuals with disabilities. Regardless of specialty all counselors could benefit from understanding the work of rehabilitation counselors. Often due to burnout or dealing with our own life issues as counselors, the level of empathy toward others can be adversely impacted. It is vital for all counselors to fight for the client’s opportunities as you would fight for your
own.
one’s self and simply asking the client about the disability and its related concerns helps improve a counselor’s understanding of the client’s concerns helps improve a counselor’s understanding of the client’s condition. A counselor may wish to help family members to develop a more positive orientation towards the situation through reframing or by using a problem-solving approach. When working with individuals with disabilities, perhaps the most important factor to consider is that these clients are people first. Their disability may contribute to some difficulties they seek help for. However, it should not always be the sole focus of counseling. It is important to address the person’s disability, but not to dwell upon it (Guyton, 2015).
Angela Boyd your thoughts on the competence of being a good counselor which includes having awareness, knowledge, and skills made me reflect on one of my experiences working with a clients who was disabled.
Working in the field of human services I come in contact with individuals with disabilities. I recently had a client that suffered a stroke over 6 years ago and he lost the ability to speak complete sentence and no use of the right side of his body. He could write everything down on paper, but the only words he could verbally say was “it’s like this”. After several meetings with him, the bottom line was that he wanted to be his own guardian and handle his own affairs. After explaining to him why he has a guardian and what that means, he was even the more persistent in coming by my office two or three times a month to write down on paper the same thing about handling his own affairs. The approach that I had to take was to convince his guardian to do another psychological evaluation. Needless to say, that he was still found incompetent but his persistent’ challenged me to look beyond his physical disability and have empathy on the fact that he has lost his independence. According to Lynne Shallcross, seeing potential and not the disability is important when counseling individuals with disabilities. Regardless of specialty all counselors could benefit from understanding the work of rehabilitation counselors. Often due to burnout or dealing with our own life issues as counselors, the level of empathy toward others can be adversely impacted. It is vital for all counselors to fight for the client’s opportunities as you would fight for your
own.