Report Outlining Requirements for a Counseling Service

Report Outlining Requirements for a Counseling Service You have been asked to prepare a report outlining the requirements for

a counselling service to be set up in an agency of your choice e.g. a

doctor’s surgery, welfare advice unit, or community support agency.

Prepare the outline of such a report, stating what you think are the

essential issues that will need to be considered, include some advice

about any potential ethical issues that may arise.

Owns and shows the importance of casework and managerial supervision.

Casework supervision will involve the counsellor’s issues with their

individual clients and should offer, when done correctly, safety,

accountability, exploration and support. The hope being that the

counsellor will feel comfortable to talk about any client issues they

have with the supervisor. This should reflect the relationship that

the counsellor has with their client, in that the core conditions

should be in place, and that the supervisor is not there to offer

advice and that the sessions should be non-directive. If this is in

place then the counsellor should develop professionally and become

more competent. However, supervision can also go wrong; the client is

not there during supervision and the supervisor has only the

supervisee’s opinions and understanding of the client to work with

this can lead to collusion and misinterpretations. In addition, there

is no guarantee that the supervisor and supervisee will even be

compatible and t...

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...h the counsellor is capable of dealing with their workload and

that the client is not suffering because the counsellor cannot cope

with their clients.

This evaluation will be formally with the manager of the agency but it

is expected that the counsellor will be evaluating their casework as

an on going process. A counsellor needs to be constantly aware of

their fitness to practice and how their own issues can affect the

relationship with the client. If home life starts to affect the client

then the counsellor will need to discuss this with both the manager

and the supervisor. However only the counsellor really knows if their

casework is getting to be too much and can evaluate the situation.

Therefore it is important that a counsellor is always checking within

themselves to be sure that they are ok with their casework.