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A critical review of the literature shows little evidence of the benefits of counselling for people infected with the HTV virus and rigorous follow-up studies are generally lacking. Authors reviewed in the literature urge the need for training in counselling. However, whether counseling training is a necessity in the context of HFV/AIDS is debatable as no evidence has yet suggested that trained counsellors are more effective than untrained ones. Therefore, it is necessary to know-how counsellors perceive their role in relation to people with HTV/AIDS. It is also essential to know what skills and training they regard as necessary for working with this group of clients. This thesis reports the results of two separate studies. Twelve questionnaires were returned and 3 interviews were conducted in the preliminary study among a small sample of people responsible for counselling women with HTV/AIDS. The results demonstrated that most counselling for this group of clients was not carried out by trained counsellors. It was concluded that counselling was not a central response to those clients. Acknowledgement of the limitations of this preliminary’ study led to the main study which was conducted among experienced and student counsellors on the perceptions of their role in working with people with HTV/AIDS.A number of significant differences were found between the perceptions of 30 experienced counsellors and 46 students in the questionnaire survey of the main study. However, experienced counsellors did not appear to feel better prepared than students in working with people with HIV/AIDS. Inconsistent results were found which suggested no agreement about whether counselling for people with HIV/AIDS required different skills and training to counselling other groups of clients. Furthermore, inconsistency between responses to different questions suggested that although respondents acknowledged a role in reducing the spread of HIV infection, they had not adequately thought through the implications of this for their counselling practice. The implications for counsellor training and supervision were discussed.

This research sets out to explore how counsellor trainers understand and experience their role in the context of early twenty-first century Britain. The training sector is facing significant pressures connected with the shifting context for counselling and changes within the educational sector itself. These are occurring against a wider backdrop of economic recession and a lack of published research into rank-and-file trainer experiences and viewpoints. The methodology of choice is Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a qualitative approach which focuses on the production of rich individual accounts of subjective experience. Sixteen trainers were recruited from across Great Britain via purposeful convenience sampling using the professional networks of the researcher, herself a trainer. The trainers were individually interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The result is four separate but interconnected studies of the experiencing and understanding of the role on the part of trainers within programmes based on person-centred, integrative, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches. The four studies are analysed separately and contextualised within the literature. Tentative overall themes are then drawn out and implications discussed. The findings highlight the multifaceted and demanding nature of the training role. A commonality and difference in understanding of the role is evident across the studies. Discernible differences focus primarily on the relational nature of the role and the centrality accorded to critical thinking and the evidence-base. There are also different levels of identification and reconciliation expressed in relation to professionalising processes. A dominant finding in terms of the experience of the role is its high-reward and high-stress nature. Across all four studies, there is an identifiable vulnerability to substantial levels of stress and a developed potential for burnout. Workload pressures, the emotional demands of the role, a limited sense of autonomy and a perceived lack of appropriate support are among some of the major factors cited. In parallel trainers report a high level of reward and vocational commitment. The experience of the role’s rewards and challenges is a dynamic one, the balance shifting in the longer or shorter term. The context of the work carries significance with trainers in the private sector reporting substantially less stress. On a wider note, the shifting professional, educational and economic contexts are perceived as adding a new note of threat and uncertainty and leading some trainers to question their vocational commitment. The continuing divisions amongst differing theoretical schools are evident as well as a continued sense of non-belonging within institutional contexts. The findings are not presented as generalisable truths but as a contribution to the development of a case-based context-dependent understanding, regarded as important to effective practitioner development.

Key Aim: The purpose of this study was to examine complex concerns and challenges encountered by counselling and psychotherapy trainers, and support them to deliver a consistent, relationship-centred learning approach within Higher Education (HE). Background: Counselling and psychotherapy training is central to regulating practice, however, studies conceptualising trainers’ concerns and challenges in the United Kingdom (UK) are sparse. Literature generally evaluates trainer challenges from a professional competence and/or gatekeeping perspective. Little evidence exists identifying problems connected with ‘professionalisation’. Aims and Objectives: The aim was to evaluate trainers’ multidimensional unease that can hinder working relationships. The intention was to: explore difficult patterns of behaviour and group dynamics in the ‘training alliance’; explore trainers’ perceptions and experiences when confronted with gatekeeping issues; collaboratively develop strategies to enhance trainers’ learning experience; examine the processes needed to sustain these strategies; and identify the lessons learnt to inform practice, education, and research. Approach and Methods: A qualitative, co-operative inquiry approach enabled trainers to question their situated and propositional knowledge, reconcile professional challenges, allay concerns about individual fitness to practice, and provide alternative responses to students, peers, and managerial hierarchies in HE and professional bodies. This approach has a political and social element, according with personal desire to make change. Thematic analysis uncovered new insights, expanded or modified principles and re-examine accepted interpretations during 8 inquiry sessions with 5 experienced trainers, and 3 associated workshops. A primarily iterative and inductive process of immersion, involved reflexive engagement, and sharing of data with trainer/practitioners. Findings: 6 overarching themes were identified: Trying to Make Sense of Significant Events; Negotiating Conflict and Incongruity in Training Groups; Navigating Inherent Challenges within Counsellor Training Teams; Teaching as a Never-Ending Challenge; Organisational Constraints and Challenges; and Contemplating Individual Connection in a Collaborative Context. Discussion and Conclusion: Findings supported previous research suggesting trainers require training, and that trainers’ concerns and challenges are interlinked; beginning with interpersonal challenges that subsequently impact on trainers’ professional and intra-personal sense of identity. Co-operative inquiry can benefit programme teams in terms of the co-construction of trainers’ realities and dynamic negotiation of meaning. Co-researchers’ knowledge and confidence in responding to potential conflict in training was enhanced. To achieve the best outcome, this knowledge needs implementing in practice; programme team involvement is a prerequisite, and support is required by professional bodies and HE to ensure ethical training practice in the face of student disgruntlement, management demands in HE and from professional accrediting bodies.

Twenty four eThekwini HIV/AIDS counsellors based in four different work settings and who received training from five different training providers, shared their HIV/AIDS counsellor training experiences. The qualitative, phenomenological study utilized a multi-methods approach. The purpose of HIV/AIDS counselling lacks uniformity. Participants reflected upon their distinction between training satisfaction and perceived competency to render HIV/AIDS counselling after training. Although they were satisfied and empowered by the useful information gained, many felt inadequate to counsel an HIV positive person on completion of training. Inadequate practical learning opportunities were evident. Participants identified the need for a more balanced theoretical and practical training program incorporating experiential and didactic training methods. Entrance criteria to HIV/AIDS counsellor training courses and eventual assessment procedures in the study were diverse. Participants suggested improvements for training methods and course content and proposed a tiered training model that will result in standardized and certified training modules. / Social Work / MA(SS) (Social Work)

Adolescent peer counselling as a social support strategy to assist adolescents to cope with stress in their peer group provides the focus for the present thesis. The prosocial behaviour of providing emotional and psychological support through the use of helping conversations by young people is examined. Current programs for training adolescent peer counsellors have failed to discover what skills adolescents bring to the helping conversation. They ignore, actively discourage, and censor, some typical adolescent conversational helping behaviours and idiosyncratic communication processes. Current programs for training adolescent peer counsellors rely on teaching microcounselling skills from adult counselling models. When using this approach, the adolescent peer helper training literature reports skill implementation, role attribution and status differences as being problematic for trained adolescent peer counsellors (Carr, 1984; de Rosenroll, 1988; Morey & Miller, 1993). For example Carr (1984) recognised that once core counselling skills have been reasonably mastered that young people " may feel awkward, mechanical or phoney" (p. 11) when trying to implement the new skills. Problematic issues with regard to role attribution and status differences appear to relate to the term 'peer counsellor' and its professional expectations, including training and duties (Anderson, 1976; Jacobs, Masson & Vass, 1976; Myrick, 1976). A particular concern of Peavy (1977) was that for too many people counselling was an acceptable label for advice giving and that the role of counsellor could imply professional status. De Rosenroll (1988) cautioned against creating miniature mirror images of counselling and therapeutic professionals in young people. However, he described a process whereby status difference is implied when a group of adolescent peer counsellors is trained and invited to participate in activities that require appropriate ethical guidelines including competencies, training, confidentiality and supervision. While Carr and Saunders (1981) suggest, "student resentment of the peer counsellor is not a problem" they go on to say, "this is not to say that the problem does not exist" (p. 21). The authors suggest that as a concern the problem can be minimised by making sure the peer counsellors are not 'forced' on the student body and by providing opportunities for peer counsellors to develop ways of managing resentment. De Rosenroll (1988) acknowledges that the adolescent peer counsellor relationship may fall within a paraprofessional framework in that a difference in status may be inferred from the differing life experiences of the peer counsellor when compared with their student peers. The current project aimed to discover whether the issues of skill implementation, role attribution and status differences could be addressed so that adolescent peer counselling, a valuable social support resource, could be made more attractive to, and useful for adolescents. The researcher's goal was to discover what young people typically do when they help each other conversationally, what they want to learn that would enhance their conversational helping behaviour, and how they experience and respond to their role as peer counsellor, and then to use the information obtained in the development of an adolescent-friendly peer counsellor training program. By doing this, the expectation was that the problematic issues cited in the literature could be addressed. Guided by an ethnographic framework the project also examined the influence of an adolescent-friendly peer counsellor training program on the non-peer counsellor students in the wider adolescent community of the high school. Three sequential studies were undertaken. In Study 1, the typical adolescent conversational and communications skills that young people use when helping each other were identified. In addition, those microcounselling skills that young people found useful and compatible with their typical communication processes were identified. In Study 2, an intervention research process was used to develop, deliver, and evaluate an adolescent-friendly peer counsellor training program which combined typical adolescent helping behaviours with preferred counselling microskills selected by participants in Study 1. The intervention research paradigm was selected as the most appropriate methodology for this study because it is designed to provide an integrated perspective for understanding, developing, and examining the feasibility and effectiveness of innovative human services interventions (Bailey-Dempsey & Reid, 1996; Rothman & Thomas, 1994). Intervention research is typically conducted in a field setting in which researchers and practitioners work together to design and assess interventions. When applying intervention research methodology researchers and practitioners begin by selecting the problem they want to remedy, reviewing the literature, identifying criteria for appropriate and effective intervention, integrating the information into plans for the intervention and then testing the intervention to reveal the intervention's strengths and flaws. Researchers then suggest modifications to make the intervention more effective, and satisfying for participants. In the final stage of intervention research, researchers disseminate information about the intervention and make available manuals and other training materials developed along the way (Comer, Meier, & Galinsky, 2004). In Study 2 an adolescent-friendly peer counsellor training manual was developed. Study 3 evaluated the impact of the peer counsellor training longitudinally on the wider school community. In particular, the project was interested in whether exposure to trained peer counsellors influenced students who were not peer counsellors with regard to their perceptions of self-concept, the degree of use of specific coping strategies and on their perceptions of the school climate. Study three included the development of A School Climate Survey which focused on the psychosocial aspects of school climate from the student's perspective. Two factors which were significantly correlated (p<.01) were identified. Factor 1 measured students' perceptions of student relationships, and Factor 2 measured students' perceptions of teachers' relationships with students. The present project provides confirmation of a number of findings that other studies have identified regarding the idiosyncratic nature of adolescent communication, and the conversational and relational behaviours of young people (Chan, 2001; Noller, Feeney, & Peterson, 2001; Papini & Farmer, 1990; Rafaelli & Duckett, 1989; Readdick & Mullis, 1997; Rotenberg, 1995; Turkstra, 2001; Worcel et al., 1999; Young et al., 1999). It extends this research by identifying the specific conversational characteristics that young people use in helping conversations. The project confirmed the researcher's expectation that some counselling microskills currently used in training adolescent peer counsellors are not easy to use by adolescents and are considered by adolescents to be unhelpful. It also confirmed that some typical adolescent conversational helping behaviours which have been proscribed for use in other adolescent peer counsellor training programs are useful in adolescent peer counselling. The project conclusively demonstrated that the adolescent-friendly peer counsellor training program developed in the project overcame the difficulties of skill implementation identified in the adolescent peer counselling literature (Carr, 1984). The project identified for the first time the process used by adolescent peer counsellors to deal with issues related to role attribution and status difference. The current project contributes new information to the peer counselling literature through the discovery of important differences between early adolescent and late adolescent peer counsellors with regard to acquiring and mastering counselling skills, and their response to role attribution and status difference issues among their peers following counsellor training. As a result of the substantive findings the current project makes a significant contribution to social support theory and prosocial theory and to the adolescent peer counselling literature. It extends the range of prosocial behaviours addressed in published research by specifically examining the conversational helping behaviour of adolescents from a relational perspective. The current project provides new information that contributes to knowledge of social support in the form of conversational behaviour among adolescents identifying the interactive, collaborative, reciprocal and idiosyncratic nature of helping conversations in adolescents. Tindall (1989) suggests that peer counsellor trainers explore a variety of ways to approach a single training model that can augment and supplement the training process to meet specific group needs. The current project responded to this suggestion by investigating which counselling skills and behaviours adolescent peer counsellor trainees preferred, were easy to use by them, and were familiar to them, and then by using an intervention research process, devised a training program which incorporated these skills and behaviours into a typical adolescent helping conversation. A mixed method longitudinal design was used in an ecologically valid setting. The longitudinal nature of the design enabled statements about the process of the peer counsellors' experience to be made. The project combined qualitative and quantitative methods of data gathering. Qualitative data reflects the phenomenological experience of the adolescent peer counsellor and the researcher and quantitative data provides an additional platform from which to view the findings. The intervention research paradigm provided a developmental research method that is appropriate for practice research. The intervention research model is more flexible than conventional experimental designs, capitalises on the availability of small samples, accommodates the dynamism and variation in practice conditions and diverse populations, and explicitly values the insights of the researcher as a practitioner. The project combines intervention research with involvement of the researcher in the project thus enabling the researcher to view and report the findings through her own professional and practice lens.

Twenty four eThekwini HIV/AIDS counsellors based in four different work settings and who received training from five different training providers, shared their HIV/AIDS counsellor training experiences. The qualitative, phenomenological study utilized a multi-methods approach. The purpose of HIV/AIDS counselling lacks uniformity. Participants reflected upon their distinction between training satisfaction and perceived competency to render HIV/AIDS counselling after training. Although they were satisfied and empowered by the useful information gained, many felt inadequate to counsel an HIV positive person on completion of training. Inadequate practical learning opportunities were evident. Participants identified the need for a more balanced theoretical and practical training program incorporating experiential and didactic training methods. Entrance criteria to HIV/AIDS counsellor training courses and eventual assessment procedures in the study were diverse. Participants suggested improvements for training methods and course content and proposed a tiered training model that will result in standardized and certified training modules. / Social Work / MA(SS) (Social Work)