Counseling Case

Abstract

The wellness of clients is the ultimate goal among all counseling professionals. Counseling professionals must remember wellness, resilience and prevention as the key philosophies of counseling and collaborate with other helping professionals to ensure the clients' mental, physical and emotional wellness. Clear professional identities allow helping professionals identify their role in within helping teams.

Counseling Specializations and Multidisciplinary Teams

All counseling specializations within the helping field play important and various roles but all have the wellness of clients as their ultimate goal. Counseling professionals such as school counselors and family counselors must remember the key philosophies of counseling and collaborate with other helping professionals to ensure the clients' mental, physical and emotional wellness.

Development

Alongside other helping professions Counseling has evolved and with it, its key philosophies. Since counseling has been considered a profession, all aspects of development have been included in its identity but more modern representations emphasize mainly in development and prevention (Meyers, 1991). The wellness philosophy isn't solely focused on the physical well being of a client, it also includes the spiritual, social and emotional qualities of the client's life (Meyers, 1991). Just like wellness is not a new idea, resilience and prevention have been part of counseling for a while. Resilience has been studied in cases where individuals go through difficult situation but despite those difficulties they continue to develop normally. Presently resilience is believed to be teachable through counseling while the client is going through a difficult situation (Fleming & Ledogar 2010). The philosophy of Prevention has been part of helping professions all along. The idea grew in popularity when counseling adopted the prevention model as part of its professional identity (Hage, & Romano, 2010).

School Counseling and Family Counseling

School counseling hasn't always been included within the counseling professions. In the beginning, school counseling focused on "the provision of guidance classes to promote character development, teach socially appropriate behaviors, and assist with vocational planning" (Paisley & Borders, 1995). The evolution of school counseling has brought many changes and school counselors now focus on promoting efficient decision making skills and personal growth (Paisley & Borders, 1995). School counselors also accountable for "services for special "at-risk" populations" and must also develop support programs for all students (Paisley & Borders, 1995).

Family Counseling has many aspects. Family counselors work with families facing a variety of issues such as divorce or parenting (Groves, 1948). In the 1950s "Conjoint therapy (a term popular during that period) was considered highly questionable, if not outright unethical" but as time progressed the benefits of family therapy outweighed the opposition therapist felt towards it (Kuehl, 2008).

School counselors and family counselors must work together