Hi All,
I have worked as a social worker for an LA for nearly two and half years. Whilst I enjoy elements of the role I get frustrated about the lack of therapeutic work we engage in.
I have looked for employment based routes into a more therapeutic role, however the opportunities seem very limited. I have applied for a couple of positions but never even had replies. I am now considering returning to uni to study a two year post graduate diploma in Therapeutic Counselling. I wondered if anyone had any experience of this? Or if anyone had any relevant advice.
Many Thanks
Lisa
Hi Lisa. Forget it and do something useful.
Bart.
Shirack: Forget it and do something useful.
Forget it and do something useful.
Any suggestions would be gratefully received
MrsM: Shirack: Forget it and do something useful. Any suggestions would be gratefully received
OP, come in to CAMHS if you want to do therapeutic work with children. I'm a social worker who moved into CAMHS six years ago and I love it.
I'm not sure what is encompassed in the generic term "Therapeutic Counselling"
I subscribe to the value of a casework interview that involves socratic questioning and solution-focussed brief therapy techniques, which basically assist the person to question themselves, and how and why they see things as they are, what they can do to make the good things about their lives happen more, and what things they do which hold them back and keep them in difficulties.
If they can examine this themselves and come to conclusions and commit to changes that they have defined for themselves, then I would see this as therapeutic, by which I mean it makes things better in a practical and enduring sense.
On the other hand there are people you can go to who will lavish you with buckets of thick warm unconditional positive regard, and encourage you that you are a wonderful, wonderful person of unlimited potential and are inferior to no-one.
You will go out feeling ten feet tall, and go about your self-destructive dysfuntional behaviour with more confidence, self belief and imperviousness than ever.......and that is also "therapeutic" by one definition.....much like a sauna or massage.....but is there an enduring beneficial effect?
So what other things come under the "therapeutic counselling" umbrella, some better and some worse?
I'm sure it means something different to each of us.
Funny how I don't see SFBT as therapy. So SS must be right. It's all in the mind.
Exactly!.....perhaps the words "therapeutic counselling" have become interchangeable with any one-to-one change effecting intervention?.
I know in some areas I have seen everyting put into two short-hand pigeon-holes .....Statutory work, and Therapeutic work.
Heaven help us!
So assessments, drawing up action plans, referring on to other agencies to meet the needs defined in the assessment, monitoring, and the expedition of various orders are statutory work;
Anything you do on a more personal level through an individual professional relationship and building a person's ability to better self-management and self-actualisation (O.K. I know!) all seems to be loosely labelled as "therapeutic"
Never mind "Therapeutic"...what is "counselling"?
Should I keep my own? Should I get rich and only counsel queens? Or would I be well counselled to stop digging when I am in a hole.
Just in case you want to go deeper, here is a link to a paper called " Counselling;In search of a definition"
http://www.ccacc.ca/_documents/NotebookEthics/What%20is%20Counselling%20A%20Search%20for%20a%20Definition.pdf