Consultation and Advocacy in Counseling Psychology - Research Paper Example

Running head: CONSULTATION AND ADVOCACY IN COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY Introduction Counselors have varied opportunities to apply their acquired skills in psychology to offer assistance in the process of helping others. Consultation and advocacy are two particular ways through which counselors can make a difference in their practice. Since the foundation of counseling psychology, advocating for social justice always has been its subsection. The position of social justice advocacy has received numerous debates. Advocacy counseling entails promoting self-determination and self-development values for every individual within the society (Palmer & Parish, 2008). Consultation has been identified by psychology scholars as a corresponding model of practice for counselors who act as advocates of social justice. As for professional psychologist counselors, consultation thus entails representing an identified client, who may be a student, through communication, and dealings with other stakeholders in the welfare of the identified client. The interaction may also be carried out with other professional consultee, who may either be an identified organization or system, which serves the client. This paper discusses consultation and advocacy as ways through which professional psychologists can make their contributions to the society. Personal Professional Development In Relation To Advocacy or Consultation According to Moe, Perera-Diltz, and Sepulveda (2010), as professional counselors, psychologists are expected to incorporate the responsibility of advocating for social justice into their primary identity to assist in redressing the past and present marginalized populations’ oppression and repression by the society. The current advocacy ideas emphasize the importance of self-reflection on the personal relation to repression within socio-political background of the dominant culture. Personally, I have learned in counseling that counselors should consider the responsibility they have as professionals in environments with dominant cultures. Counselors are supposed to bring together the responsibility of social change agents ad healers within the society. In addition, while acting for their determined clients, including the clients marginalized and oppressed, counselors should encourage and promote systematic change, which is pro-social and macro-level. As a developing counselor, I have passion in integrating both responsibilities of acting as an agent of social change as well as healing the affecting areas in the society caused by dominant culture (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). As an individual I have evaluated critically myself and realized that the standards and values that I am strongly attracted toward advocating include participation, equity, and harmony. These standards and values can be best imparted and promoted into the society through initiating changes at varied levels, such as community level, socio-cultural level besides at individual level (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). In focusing much on advocating for social justice, my future professional growth and development will touch on some elements of consultation. As a counselor, consultation, often with other professionals, is of immense significance in maintaining acceptable care standards. Because several practicing psychologists are described as not utilizing consultation opportunities (Clayton & Bongar, 1994), I am even more encouraged to ensure that in any event that consultation will be necessary in executing my duties, I would gladly engage it. Relationship between Consultation and Advocacy Consultation and advocacy are similar because both practitioners share certain theoretical background in practice mode, encouraging counselors to act beyond their interaction circle. Both advocacy and consultation require the application of professional practices like collaboration with several groups of stakeholders to accomplish their desired goals. In addition, practitioners in advocacy as well as consultation need to identify institutional guidelines, which may encourage marginalization of susceptible members of the community (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Advocacy Benefits to Care Provided For Children, Adolescents, Adults, Couples, and Families Related To Counseling Practice Advocacy would benefit immensely the care offered to children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families, by practicing counselors, such that it would assist the practicing counselor to redress the societal oppressions, both present, and past, which the marginalized populations have encountered from the society. Advocacy would ensure that counselors carry out individual self-reflection in relation to repression present in socio-political setting of the dominant culture before setting out to seek solutions for the problems (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Furthermore, advocacy counselors would be persuaded and encouraged to reflect on the responsibility of counseling within the dominant culture in the society. Consequently, the care given to various groups within the society would be enhanced and encouraged by counselors. All these groups of clients would benefit from systematic change on the repressions they were encountering. Eventually, the clients would benefit from gaining standards and values, including harmony, equity, participation, and access (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Institutional and Social Barriers Presently, there are no guidelines put in place to guide advocacy in counseling. However, theoretically, psychology scholars have identified the competencies that need to be integrated into counseling practice to accomplish effectively the responsibility of social advocacy. The fundamental challenge encountered by psychologists is how to incorporate these competencies into psychology counseling practice. Additional issue is in attempting to amalgamate the evolving model of advocacy into the primary frameworks of counseling, such as multicultural theory. These factors are all important in counseling because the profession s expanding and the needs of the clients too. Therefore, the obstacles in incorporating advocacy in counseling ought to be eliminated to facilitate the process (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Besides, there are limitations in articulating the advocacy paradigm into additional knowledge realms significant to professional counseling. The present research available does not contain adequate empirical information on the relevance of advocacy in counseling psychology and its important domains (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Also, students, and counseling practitioners have demonstrated contradictory reactions in tackling the challenges and problems of social power as well as privilege in counseling. Counselors are opposed to tackling social privileges as a problem that is appropriate and pertinent to counseling. Separately, certain counselors have proposed that the social advocacy and multicultural advocates describe in many details the method of implementing social advocacy into daily counseling practice (Moe, Perera-Diltz, & Sepulveda, 2010). Hypothetical Situation A hypothetical case example will involve a depressed wife and a bipolar husband lamenting of relentless communication difficulties associated with the diabetes and kidney cancer of the wife. The couple is older, and after the initial presentation of depression in the wife the dominant couple complaint of adverse communication problems linked to the health behavior of the wife. The wife considered separation as the appropriate resolution to her challenges. The consultation sessions arranged with the clients aimed at prescribing effective interventions mechanisms to break off the interpersonal patterns demonstrated by the complaints. Other issues complicated the circumstance because both clients had ancient psychiatric diagnoses, they were on multiple medications, were entitled to disability income, and demonstrated obstinate conflicts with additional members of their family. Interaction of Counselors Knowledge of Consultation and Advocacy with the Progression of Counseling Experience In helping the couple to deal with their communication difficulties, the counselor applied his knowledge of advocacy for advise the couple to take their medications seriously, and attending all medical appointments to ensure that the clients regained better health. The counselor consulted with the other family members to get a broader perspective of the problem affecting the couple. The counselor encouraged the couple to engage in communal coping. Because there was need for therapeutic process, the counselor sought the knowledge and input of professional therapist to be part of the team to help the couple to have a better health and life. The counselor also used the process to advocate for psychiatric patients not to be negatively affected by the family behaviors in collectively branding them psychiatric patients are encouraging them to act together. Each patient should be encouraged to look beyond the collective tag and act their own lives separately. The counselor used a very effective approach in framing the case as consultation but acknowledged the need for advocacy to help the society better handle patients with similar problems. Communal orientation by the involved stakeholders improved the potential of success expected (Rohrbaugh, Kogan, & Shoham, 2012). Conclusion Generally, literature supports that social advocacy and consultation potentially relate in particular areas of counseling psychology. The development of consultation involves practices easier and challenging to integrate into the counseling practice. Advocacy may be incorporated into counseling psychology through recognizing the influences in the model and adjusting the advocacy model to suit the present counseling framework applied by practitioners. In addition, bringing together advocacy and consultation paradigms in counseling would be imperative in enhancing the potential of practicing counselors to perform or endorse their services based on recognition of strengths, elimination of obstacles to growth, and liberating human development. References Clayton, S., & Bongar, B. (1994). The use of consultation in psychological practice: ethical, legal, and clinical considerations. Ethics & Behavior , 4 (1), 43-57. Moe, J. L., Perera-Diltz, D., & Sepulveda, V. (2010). Are Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy Similar?: Exploring the Perceptions of Professional Counselors and Counseling Students. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology , 3 (1), 106-123. Palmer, A., & Parish, J. (2008). Social Justice and Counselling Psychology: Situating the Role of Graduate Student Research, Education, and Training. Canadian Journal of Counselling , 42 (4), 278-292. Rohrbaugh, M. J., Kogan, A. V., & Shoham, V. (2012). Family Consultation for Psychiatrically Complicated Health Problems. Journal of Clinical Psychology , 68 (5), 570-580. Read More