School counselling is a growing service in Singapore. Having implemented counselling services in all the public schools for over half a decade, it was timely to examine how teachers looked at ...counselling in school setting. Interviews with teachers suggested their overall positiveness about counselling service in Singapore schools. Teachers view the counselling service as a helpful addition because (1) it extended more individual attention to students; (2) it offered a potential source for teachers to learn more about students through a different perspective; and (3) school counsellors could work with parents and families, especially in situations where referral to external resources is needed. These observations are discussed in this paper.
Background
Friendships help children cope with stress, become more socially competent and achieve well academically. The Friendship Club (Tillman, 2012) is a small group school counselling ...intervention that meets weekly for 12 weeks to focus on social skills training for elementary age children.
Aims
The purpose of the study was to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum in improving the social skills and overall well‐being of the participants and examine the psychometric properties of parent, teacher and self‐report pre‐ and post‐tests.
Methodology
Thirty‐four children between the ages of six and 12 participated in Friendship Club groups at local elementary schools. Prior and after the group sequence, parents, teachers and children were given a standard pre‐test which assessed such dimensions as friendships, communication skills, interpersonal skills such as sharing, and abilities such as conflict management. Paired‐samples t tests were conducted between key items and scale averages.
Results
All four scales designed to assess implementation of social skills showed excellent levels of internal consistency. Qualitative parent‐report results include several improvements. Qualitative self‐report included a number of clear strengths‐based improvements. Quantitative results include that students reported a significant increase in their willingness to socialise with others. Additionally, the average score of children's implementation of helpful social skills as reported by their parents rose significantly.
Conclusion
After examining the quantitative and qualitative parent and child reports, this study concludes that overall the group curriculum for the Friendship Club was beneficial at facilitating the integration of social skills for children identified as struggling to maintain relationships.
Background: Levels of goal agreement between therapists and adult clients have been shown to relate to therapeutic outcomes. Understanding clients' goals for therapy, therefore, is an important area ...of study. Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic goals that young people have in school‐based counselling, and the extent to which different types of goals are achieved. Method: The study is a post‐hoc analysis of data collected from two pilot randomised controlled trials (RCT) using the Goal Based Outcome (GBO) tool, in which 73 participants were allocated to either a counselling group or a waitlist control group. Thematic analysis was used to identify the main types of goals young people had; with descriptive quantitative analysis to identify the prevalence of these goals, and multi‐level analysis to identify whether some goals were attained to a greater extent than others. Results: The most frequent type of goals identified by young people related to increasing self‐confidence and self‐acceptance, followed by controlling or reducing anger, improving relationships with family, and increasing feelings of happiness. No significant relationship was found between the type of goal and the extent to which they were attained in counselling. Conclusion: Young people in counselling are particularly concerned with improving their self‐confidence, and this suggests a somewhat different focus to the counselling work than that which emerges from counsellors' reports of presenting and predominant issues. This suggests that school‐based counsellors should be mindful of clients' particular therapeutic goals.
Construction and Validation of the ISCOS Questionnaire: A study on School Counselling Development Indicators. The aim of the study is to construct and validate a new questionnaire called ...ISCOS (Development Indicators of School COunselling) designed to measure specific usage profiles of counselling at school. These profiles related to couselling service are called Provoke Profile, Distrust Profile, Fear Profile and Trust Profile, as identified in previous exploratory researches (Freda et al., 2009; Esposito et al., 2010). These profiles have been conceptualized as symbolic and cultural models (Carli & Paniccia, 2003 and 2011) of the service representation. Another aim of the study is to investigate possible associations among these usage models and the influences of variables such as age and gender of the students. ISCOS was submitted to a number of 241 students (Female = 115; Male = 126) aged among 13 and 20 years (M = 16.23; ds = 1.81), attending a high school in Naples where a counselling service was already activated. The exploratory factor analysis showed the stability of two factors (Types of Investment and Retreat) that explain 37% of the total variance. Finally, for both factors was found a significant difference concerning only the gender variable. The questionnaire showed good psychometric qualities. It presents itself as an innovative tool designed to analyze specific emotional dimensions underlying the usage models identified. However, further investigations are deemed necessary to further diversifying and expanding the sample with regard to the origin and the field of studies.
This article explores the particular relevance of sibling dynamics for counsellors working in schools. School, when viewed as a large 'lateral' organisation, both reflects and reactivates sibling ...dynamics. This thinking about school counselling is based on the 'whole school' approach, in which a school counsellor works with staff and students, and with organisational dynamics, seeking to understand the unconscious emotional life of the school system, as well as those within it. The initial sections of the article are concerned both with the place of siblings in psychodynamic theory, and with challenges which sibling dynamics present for a counsellor working in a school context. There follow three linked sections in which the invitation to 'think sibling' is illustrated with some clinical examples, drawn from the specific context of a boarding school. All identities have been changed and anonymised to protect confidentiality. The article concludes with a discussion of sibling dynamics in practice, within the context of schools.
This is a case study from Singapore. The purpose of the study is to critically enquire into the ways in which school counsellors working in Singapore's secondary school system describe and experience ...their role, and to identify key themes arising from the study. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 participants, and an adapted grounded theory methodology was used to guide the data collection and data analysis process. Findings showed that the role experienced by the counsellors was less restricted to role base, but operated on a multi-faceted role description regime. The multiple approaches reveal the strengths of the system and were consistent with the literature; however, there was a need for a more effective collaborative systemic model. Hence a school counselling model is proposed as a result of this study to give insight into, and provide support for, the counsellors' role in the development of pupils in a school setting.
School counselling, as conceptualised in our educational system, was never meant solely as counselling, i.e. helping students in their personal development and learning. It also provides indirect ...help in terms of collaboration on the creation of an adequate school environment as well as educational work and processes. When looking after a child's holistic development, it is necessary to take care of appropriate conditions and provide a suitable school environment. In order to do that, school counsellors have to work closely with classes, the school's staff, management, parents and the external environment. In the first part of the article, we present some basis for the collaboration of the school counselling service with individuals and institutions in the community. In the second part, we present results of the empirical study on this collaboration, which we carried out among school counsellors in the autumn of 2014. Our research findings confirm that the school counsellors have an important role in collaboration with various individuals and institutions in the community. Some school counsellors stated that, without the help of external institutions or individuals, they would not be able to carry out specific activities or projects in the school and successfully solve students' and families' problems. Furthermore, the counsellors pointed out various obstacles to mutual collaboration, which require more attention in future efforts for good-quality mutual collaboration. This fact requires all partners to master interpersonal, communication, organisational and collaborative skills together with reflection on their work and ways to cooperate.
Increasing attention has been focused on adolescent help‐seeking in relation to services aimed at promoting mental health and wellbeing. Much research reinforces the ubiquity of concerns about ...negative stigmatisation by peers as a barrier to young people accessing services. This paper draws on interviews conducted with young people, who completed a course of counselling in school, to investigate how they managed and negotiated this. Drawing on positioning theory from discourse analysis, young people’s accounts are analysed with reference to the variety of positions they articulated and adopted. This demonstrates how they elaborated and reinforced virtuous problem‐solver positions within broader discourses of individualisation and normalisation, and resisted positioning within a stigmatised mental illness discourse. Although focused on a small sample, the analysis offers potential insights into the ways other people may negotiate stigma concerns to access mental health resources, while also demonstrating the utility of positioning theory for understanding stigma and normalisation.
Increases in mental health problems within Japan's school population have led the Japanese government to initiate school counselling services. However, the development of counselling services is ...hindered by the lack of public appreciation for the magnitude of mental health problems and the lack of clarity regarding the economic benefits of such counselling services. The aim of this study was to evaluate perceptions of the economic value of school counselling services. An internet-based questionnaire survey using a contingent valuation method was conducted (n = 600). Data on age, sex, marital status, family structure, job, annual household income, present/lifetime experience in using counselling services, and familiarity with school counselling services were compiled. Main outcome measure was willingness to pay for school counselling services. Study participants indicated a median willingness to pay JPY 1,332 (USD 13.32) per year for counselling services. The logistic regression analysis showed that the present use of counselling services and having children were significantly associated with WTP, while the other measured variables were not. The present study clarifies the public perception of the monetary value of school counselling services, and thus provides useful information to policymakers and taxpayers.
For a school counsellor or classroom teacher, working with newly arrived students from refugee backgrounds can be daunting, particularly with the awareness that these students have likely experienced ...significant and potentially horrific trauma. There is now a wealth of evidence showing that traumatic experiences can significantly impact our neurological development, resulting in difficulties in areas such as learning, behaviour, relationship building and emotion regulation, meaning newly arrived refugee students will often arrive at school with some significant challenges. While there is an extensive amount of literature on trauma, there is very little that focuses specifically on the refugee population, and even less on young people from refugee backgrounds. Predominantly, the research looks at chronic or developmental trauma such as child abuse and neglect, or acute trauma such as natural disasters. The following article looks at the refugee context specifically, breaking down the difference between acute, chronic and developmental trauma; and describing the neurological effects of trauma and suggesting some practical classroom-based strategies that can be employed to support and facilitate the recovery of students from refugee backgrounds.
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