Using the Advocacy Skill in Counselling
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Professional counselor advocacy includes taking action to support the profession, emphasizing minimizing or removing obstacles to counselors’ capacity to offer services (Storlie, Woo, Fink, & Fowler, 2019). Even though advocacy has become progressively crucial over the past twenty years, endeavors related to professional advocacy have received minimal attention and made little advancement compared to the client and social matters advocacy. This article discusses professional advocacy and its significance, examples of professional advocacy and its barriers, and the concept of counselor identity.
Counseling is a mission-founded career, implying that every counselor had a motive for choosing this profession. There was somebody they desired to serve, or some client population or setting for which they wanted to make a difference. Every counselor has felt called to be agents of transformation. The counselors’ professional competencies and ethics codes mandate they advocate alongside and for their clients. When considering advocacy, counselors do not always think about their mission for their profession. Issues such as employment prospects, correct representation of their career, public recognition, and parity (being paid at the same rate as other mental health specialists with similar training) are vital if counselors practice their craft (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). Counselors should know and promote their worth and realize that they cannot assist others if they are not healthy and strong as a career. Thus, professional advocacy should be a topmost priority for every counselor.
According to Ramírez Stege, Brockberg, & Hoyt (2017), advocacy actions function to broaden counselors’ presence at the national, state, and community levels, and counselors must not underrate the significance of promoting the development of the career through actions taken in their regional communities. Additionally, professional advocacy activities involve those targeted at positively supporting the counseling career.
Large-scale advocacy activities can be theorized as capital “A” advocacy activities, while smaller-scale advocacy activities could be referred to as lowercase “a” advocacy activities. For instance, “A” advocacy activities may cover large, organized endeavors such as those targeted at changing state or federal legislation or local practices and policies (Storlie, Woo, Fink, & Fowler, 2019). They could involve supervising and teaching students through applying ethics, developing competencies, and setting standards. They are the counselors’ shared responsibility to unite their voices.
Instances of “a” advocacy activities involve those constant, in-the-moment endeavors that positively support the counseling career (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). These endeavors might produce affirmative cultural change concerning counseling, assistance-seeking or what it implies to be a counselor. These endeavors could similarly involve mentoring the next cohort of professionals.
A significant element is that neither “a” nor “A” advocacy activities are less or more vital. Both kinds are required, and every counselor has a part to play in professional advocacy endeavors. Presently, counselors encounter many obstacles to offering care to communities, clients, and students (Ramírez Stege, Brockberg, & Hoyt, 2017). Such barriers include lack of licensure manageability, Medicare coverage gap, insufficient financing for mental health treatment across scopes, insufficient funding for school counselors, and a lack of public awareness on counseling as a career. Additionally, graduate education’s increasing cost usually leaves professional counselors across all scopes endeavoring to pay back student loans many years following degree completion.
Each of the obstacles mentioned above makes it hard for counselors to offer care to the communities and people who require them most. For instance, if an older person whose primary insurance is Medicare cannot receive a licensed expert counselor’s services, then their choices to get assistance to become narrow. When a counselor crosses state lines and cannot work in their new community, it is unfair to both the community and the counselor, mainly since counselors have a countrywide deficiency. Insufficient financing of counseling services implies that counselors are not paid correctly and that clients cannot get services crucial to their wellbeing. Insufficient student-to-school counselor proportions harm both school counselors and students. In every instance, communities, clients, and counselors are negatively impacted by obstacles at the sociopolitical level that inhibit counselors from doing their jobs (Storlie, Woo, Fink, & Fowler, 2019).
A necessary aspect of successful professional advocacy is a distinct professional identity. Lest counselors know who they are, they are unable to communicate that message to stakeholders. CACREP, NBCC, CSI, ACA and other professional counseling bodies have helped guide counselors toward a shared professional identity (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). Development of the ACA Code of Ethics, promotion of CACREP training and education standards, and the implementation of proficiencies put forward by ACA classes are amongst the ways the counseling career has worked to support and define counselor identity.
The counseling profession has come a long way. However, counselors still have work to do. Counselors continue to encounter numerous obstacles that get in the way of the counselors’ capacity to practice. Every counselor, and all of their professional organizations and associations, have a duty to devote to and work toward advocacy endeavors that will advance their profession.
References
Ramírez Stege, A. M., Brockberg, D., & Hoyt, W. T. (2017). Advocating for advocacy: An exploratory survey on student advocacy skills and training in counseling psychology. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 11(3), 190.
Ratts, M. J., & Greenleaf, A. T. (2018). Counselor–advocate–scholar model: Changing the dominant discourse in counseling. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 46(2), 78-96.
Storlie, C. A., Woo, H., Fink, M., & Fowler, A. (2019). A content analysis of the domains of advocacy competencies in select counseling journals: 2004–2016. Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy, 6(1), 42-54.