Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy - Essay Example

? Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy Introduction Social justice in counseling is a multifaceted approach for persons in the counseling field to promote the development of human beings and their common good through addressing shortcomings that affect the individual and justice that is retributive. This calls for the empowerment of the individual or the group by addressing the injustice and inequality experienced in the society and their impacts on the client. Counselors therefore adopt principles that are aimed at ensuring equity, access, participation and harmony in the society. Equity entails the fair distribution of resources in the society including the rights and responsibilities while access involves the notion of ensuring fairness to a person and the universal common good based on the capacity of the members of the society to access those resources, power and information. This is important as it enables individuals to achieve a standard of living that makes it easy for one to realize self-determination and development of the human. Participation ensures that every person in the society is consulted in every decision that is made when it is likely to have an impact on his or her lives or the lives of others. Harmony on the other hand is the principle of social adjustment whereby actions that revolve around the interests of persons are geared towards achieving the best results that can be shared by the whole society. Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy Numerous counselors both past, present or future state that social justice advocacy is not related in any way to counseling. However, other scholars have proposed that social justice advocacy should be integrated in professional counseling to address past and present marginalization or oppression of populations in the society (Moe, Perera-Diltz and Sepulveda, 2010). Counselors who believe in social justice contend that the development issues in humans cannot be comprehended by just assessing the affective, behavioral or cognitive development or by expecting a change to come exclusively from the client. However, it is important to integrate activism with social advocacy to address the inequitable socio-political and economic factors that hinder the development of human beings (Ratts, 2009). The aim of achieving social justice is to ensure that every person has the chance to realize his or her academic, career or be free from unnecessary hindrances that may prevent the realization of such goals. To achieve this, the client must be involved in the counseling process in that their input in terms of the direction that the therapeutic process should follow will dictate how they apply the knowledge and the skills acquired (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007). Social justice has got numerous benefits in relation to counseling as it provides a module for the comprehension of the negative impacts that oppression may cause to a client that prevents him from achieving his potential. This inspires counselors to possess a viable and a sensible perception of persons in relation to their surroundings and the improvement of skills at their disposal. Advocacy as practiced in counseling requires that the counselor have strong beliefs that ensure equity and the speaking out on behalf of the members of the society that seem to be powerless or oppressed in one way or the other. This can help in the changing of environment that the clients live in as well as addressing the issues of the clients. To achieve this, the counselor is required to be aware of the issue through a proper understanding of it so that he can develop skills that will enable the client understand his problem and develop solutions for it. Counselors involved in advocacy must recognize the impact of social, economic and cultural factors that affect the development of human beings in their daily life. This will require that the counselors help the clients in understanding their own lives in socio-political contexts that helps in the laying of foundation for the empowerment of the individual. The advocacy counselor therefore often has the ability and capacity to instill change in policies to enable the client to have an equal access to products or services that were hitherto denied to them previously (Lewis et al. 2003). The integration of social justice advocacy can be used to redress past and present societal oppression of the marginalized especially the children by the professional counselors (Roysircar, 2009). The present idea of social justice advocacy therefore represents a reflection of one’s own relationship to the oppression in the society and therefore counselors are implored to consider the roles that they play in a particular culture as a reconciliation of the role of the healer as compared to that of the agent for change in the society. Social advocacy therefore calls for equity, access to justice, active participation of everyone and unrivalled harmony as values aimed at changing the initiatives of the individual, community or the society. Consultation has been identified as a complementary way of achieving the role a social counselor is supposed to play as a social advocate. This is because the consultation for the professional counselor would involve acting on behalf of the client in this case the child through active interaction with another person to realize a positive welfare to the child. One similarity between consultants and social advocates is that they both use basic skills to achieve their desired results in advocacy and consulting work. It is also important to note that both consultants and social advocates are involved in the solution of problems that may bedevil their clients especially the children. Both consultants and social advocates act on behalf of their clients and are actively involved in contextualizing issues that concern their clients. Consultants on the other hand are only engaged in the diagnosis of their clients through the use of patterns that are related to behaviors through analysis and the negotiation of access for resources and the evaluation of outcomes while the social advocates use direct actions in order to facilitate the desired change in the society. Consultants are also more involved in in the negotiation for access to the often-rare resources. Numerous barriers may hinder full achievement of social justice and advocacy. These may include issues that are related to funding and insurance or the lack of support and resources from the community in which the counselor is undertaking his activities or resistance that is unexpected at the time the counselor is undertaking his studies. There may also be difficulty met in the building of collaborative networks between the counselor and individuals or the community. To overcome these barriers, it is important that counselors work together by appreciating the hindrances in order to come up with new ways to achieve success. This requires that the counselors make connections and collaborate in order to achieve better results as a group. Conclusion It is important to note that consultation and social justice can be collaboratively used in specific areas as their functions overlap in one way or the other. This is because in some instances it would be easier to integrate the tenets of social justice involved in collaborative problem-solving or the use of basic skills in contexts as they present themselves. However, such behavior like the assessment, the diagnosis or engagement in direct action is difficult to integrate with the social justice system. Therefore counselors have the ability to accomplish their daily practices by acknowledging the influences brought about by ethnic or racial identifications in order to integrate social justice advocacy into their professional duties. The alignment of consultation and the social justice advocacy system can help in the maximization of the potential inherent in counselors that will enable them to offer services that are related to their strengths in the counseling field, the removal of barriers or limitations that may prevent them from achieving their function, and the facilitation of the development of humans. References Adams, M., Bell, L. A., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (2007). Teaching for diversity and social justice (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Lewis, J., Lewis, M., Daniels, J., & D?Andrea, M. (2003). Community counseling: Empowerment strategies for a diverse society (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Moe, J. L., Perera-Diltz, D., & Sepulveda, V. (2010). Are consultation and social justice advocacy similar? Exploring perceptions of professional counselors and counseling students. Journal for Social Action in Counseling Psychology, 3 (1), 106-123. Roysircar, G. (2009). The big picture of advocacy: Counselor, heal society and thyself. Journal of Counseling & Development, 87, 288-294. Read More