Unlicensed, non-credentialed counsellors pose a substantial risk for harm to those seeking counselling in Canada. Professional associations and legislative bodies in Canada are seeking protection of the public through certification and regulation processes that require evidence of professional competence. I examine and discuss the development process for and reliability and validity measures of a prototype for a Canadian standard entry-to-practice counselling competency assessment. Unique to this study is a focus on process orientation. Using a mixed methods approach, I observe and document the steps used by a pan-Canadian test development team to create a prototype for a valid, reliable, credible, and fair national assessment of counselling competency at the entry-to-practice level. Beginning with the formation of a national competency profile that delineates a scope of practice for the counselling profession, I move through the assessment creation process from conceptual foundations and rationale to assessment blueprint, item writing, beta testing, and strategic checks for validation and reliability. The culmination of this study is a replicable process for the creation of fair, valid, and reliable test instruments for the counselling profession in Canada.

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.

This research study sought to understand how Canadian counsellors in the province of Ontario negotiated and constructed their professional identity amid unfolding regulatory changes. These changes would bring restrictions to both title use and practice of psychotherapy once the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario was established and legislation was fully enacted. For those who identify with the title of ‘counsellor’ and share overlapping scopes of practice with psychotherapy it is uncertain what they will draw upon to construct, rework or maintain their counsellor professional identity. The intention was to build a descriptive, experiential account of the identity work being done by counsellors as they navigated through the uncertainty accompanying this period of transition. A qualitative single case study design was used to explore the particularity of this contemporary occurrence of professional identity construction employing multiple data collection sources to garner a holistic picture of this phenomenon. Input was gathered from twenty-four Ontario counsellors who were students, novice or experienced practitioners who either participated in two semi-structured interviews (n=10) or an asynchronous virtual focus group hosted in the discussion forum of Blackboard Learn™ (n= 14). Additional data sources included the use of a demographic questionnaire, participant observation, and document analysis. In order to augment more subtle or deeper meaning levels additional data collection instruments were employed and these included the use of participant diagramming, a request for a descriptive metaphor, and graphic elicitation diagram. Using a thematic analysis strategy, a within case and cross analysis of the embedded subunits was undertaken. Findings from the data analysis revealed a number of salient themes that offered insights into how counsellors construct their professional identity during periods of uncertainty. There were five higher order or global themes which emerged: (a) counsellors have a sense of agency around the construction and communication of their professional identity, (b) identity construction is a process of organic, emergent growth that continues throughout professional life; (c) the shaping and negotiation of counsellor professional identity is guided by values; (d) when change contexts arise counsellors safeguard identity integrity by protecting its distinctiveness, definitional parameters and characterization in practice settings; and (e) during transition periods counsellors are willing to execute adaptive shifting as part of their identity work provided this does not infringe upon their professional values. Results indicate that meaning, values and agency galvanize the professional identity work done by counsellors and during transition brought about by a significant exogenous change event, such as the recent moves toward professional regulation, these negotiation strategies prevail. This case study took advantage of a contemporary instance of counsellor professional identity construction during unprecedented change to provide not only a rich description of this phenomenon but also to introduce a thematic diagram to act as a starting point for further discussion. Implications for counsellors, counsellor education and training programs, the profession, and future research are each discussed along with ideas for fostering informal avenues for counsellors across the experience spectrum to nurture their professional identity in a protean, agential manner.

This thesis addresses four research questions: 1. Are counsellors changed by their clients? 2. If so, how do they make meaning of any change? 3. How does the academic literature explain these changes? 4. How do counsellors ensure change is positive?Previous research has largely focused on the negative effects of clients' stories on counsellors. The potentially positive impact is relatively unexplored - despite the fact that research suggests that it is possible for people who directly experience a wide range of traumatic experiences to grow as a result (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). Moreover, a handful of research studies has suggested that it is possible to experience these changes vicariously (Manning-Jones, deTerte & Stephens, 2015). This thesis describes a qualitative research study carried out with eight counsellors who worked either in a hospice (counselling clients experiencing bereavement or illness) or in private practice (counselling clients who had experienced sexual violence). Narrative inquiry and autoethnography were used to collect and analyse counsellors' stories of being changed by their clients and re-presented as poetic representation, visual art and polyvocal texts. The results show that counsellors do indeed share stories of being changed: sometimes for the worse but often for the better. These changes are in the areas of self-perception, interpersonal relationships and life philosophy and are largely consistent with conceptualisations of vicarious posttraumatic growth. However, what drives change is different. In hospice counsellors, mortality awareness is the driver for change; whereas human cruelty and brutality is the driver in counsellors who work with clients who have experienced sexual violence. Counsellors draw on a number of alternative discourses to make meaning of their experience and this reflects different counselling modalities. The counsellors' stories of change may represent personal growth or reflect western metanarratives linked to a quest for identity. These findings are discussed in relation to the training and supervision of practitioners.

Self-care is necessary for psychotherapists to prevent burnout and to provide ethical services for clients. Counselling students often recognize the need for self-care, but neglect to implement it, preventing them from building the necessary practices to endure hardships related to practicing psychotherapy. Previous research, such as Butler and colleague’s work (2017), has examined the importance of self-care in counselling education, but has not examined how it is applied in practice. Therefore, this project’s research questions included: 1) How do novice therapists engage in professional self-care? 2) How do novice therapists bridge the gap between conceptual knowledge and practice of professional self-care? 3) What are the barriers to self-care? Thematic Analysis (TA) was used to distil meaning from common experiences of participants. Four psychotherapists with an average of 1.5 years of experience were interviewed using an in-depth semi-structured interview protocol. Eighteen subthemes were generated from the data, further categorized under four themes: (1) obstacles to self-care; (2) work-life balance; (3) pathways to self-care; and (4) effects of self-care. Implications of this research include structured self-reflection in counsellor training programs, integration of flexibility and self-care provisions in workplace cultures, and a strong policy emphasis on the need for counsellor self-care and improving professional guidelines to allow for counsellor self-care practices.

Syftet med studien var att belysa hur studie- och yrkesvägledare beskriver tjänsteomfattningens inverkan på yrkesrollen. Den metod som användes var kvalitativ och sammanlagt genomfördes fem intervjuer. En studie- och yrkesvägledarutbildare med lång erfarenhet av både yrket och utbildningen intervjuades för att ge ett övergripande perspektiv på studie- och yrkesvägledares yrkesroll och dess problematik. För att få mer specifika kunskaper kring studie- och yrkesvägledares uppfattning om tjänsteomfattning intervjuades fyra studie- och yrkesvägledare från Samlad vägledning i Uppsala kommun. Resultatet visar att vägledarna i undersökningen anser att deras uppdrag som vägledare är att hjälpa eleverna att hitta sig själva och hjälpa dem att finna en utbildning som passar deras behov. Samtliga vägledare, oavsett om de hade en stor tjänst eller en liten tjänst, önskade att de hade möjlighet att utföra mer i sitt arbete. Avslutningsvis drogs slutsatsen att vägledarna har samma syn på vad yrkesrollen innebär och vad som är det huvudsakliga uppdraget. Vad de däremot har möjlighet att utföra i sitt arbete skiftar beroende på tjänstens omfattning. / This study’s aim was to investigate how career counsellors describe the work conditions affect of their professional role. The method used in the study was qualitative and in total five respondents were interviewed. To get an overview of career counsellors’ professional role and its complexity an educator with long experience of career counselling was interviewed.  In addition four career counsellors from an organisation in Uppsala called Samlad vägledning shared their thoughts of the professional role and experiences of their work conditions. The results show that the career counsellors’ found the aim of their work is to help pupils find themselves, their interests and their goals and to help them find an education which fulfil their dreams. All career counsellors in this study wished they had the opportunity to accomplish more in their work than they do under their current work conditions.   Finally the conclusions show that all the respondents share the same view of the aim of career counsellors’ work. However what the career counsellors in fact are able to do in their professional role depend on their work conditions.

The use of audio and videotape recordings in counsellor education for the purpose of training and supervision is controversial. Although recordings give counsellors and supervisors direct access to the counselling session and therefore the skills of the counsellor, a number of concerns have been recorded both in early research (Betcher & Zinberg, 1988; Frankel, 1971; Gelso, 1973; Goldstein, 1988; Lamb & Mahl, 1956; Niland, 1971; Van Atta, 1969) and more recently in counsellors’ correspondence to the NZAC Newsletter (Anonymous, 2006; Grant, 2006) regarding the effects on counsellors, clients and on the counselling process itself. There is a scarcity of current research on whether or not recording of counselling or therapeutic interviews actually interferes with the counselling process. The few empirical studies of the effects of recording are inconsistent in their findings and their methodological flaws preclude meaningful interpretation of the literature as a whole (Goldstein, 1988). This qualitative research study focuses on one aspect of recording counselling interviews; the perceptions of counselling students. Thirteen counselling students enrolled on counsellor education programmes at five tertiary educational settings in Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand participated in interviews. They indicated that they perceived the process of recording to be anxiety promoting, initially having an effect on their ability to be completely present in the counselling interview. They also reported that recording was extremely beneficial to the development of effective counselling skills. Counsellors perceived the process of recording to be a potential threat to the developing relationship between counsellor and client but many were able to manage this concern by establishing trust and rapport before introducing recording. The majority of the student counsellors perceived that they became more confident with the process over time, moving from a state of anxiety in initial recordings to a more relaxed style with practice. This has implications for future practice and for early introduction to frequent recording in counsellor education programmes.

Several studies have suggested that compassion satisfaction (CS) promotes counsellor wellness through its mitigating effects on compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious traumatization. CS also contributes to career longevity and to a sense of fulfillment, balance, and wellness that extends from counsellors’ professional to personal lives. Yet, to date, very little research has been done using counsellor wellness or CS as a primary focus. While the literature on CS is relatively new, even less attention appears to have been paid to what experienced counsellors actively do to maintain CS and therefore, their wellness as counsellors. The purpose of this study was to extend the literature on counsellor CS by asking experienced counsellors how they actively maintain CS in their work. Participants (N = 6) were counsellors in the Victoria area who had worked in the field for at least 10 years, had a minimum of a Masters degree, and who were experiencing CS at the time of data collection. A social constructivist perspective was used to frame the study, and narrative interviews were used to collect the counsellors’ stories of how they had maintained CS throughout their careers. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and 6 themes are reported. Findings suggest that counsellors can actively increase their likelihood of maintaining CS by: (a) maintaining boundaries; (b) practicing self-care; (c) cultivating self-awareness; (d) developing positive, fulfilling relationships; (e) engaging in ongoing learning; and (f) embracing variety. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for counsellor training programs, the personal and professional lives and retention of counsellors already in the field, directors of counselling agencies, and client care. / Graduate / 0621 / 0622 / 0519 / 0769 / 0569 / alexsterling7@gmail.com

School counsellors are individuals with specialized training in social-emotional support for children and adolescents. In fact, school counsellors are the front-line school personnel who recognize and respond to various student mental health concerns. Despite the important role of school counsellors, there is little research that explores the experiences and perceptions of school counsellors who support students with mental health concerns. Using a phenomenological qualitative approach, this study is based on a set of interviews conducted with four school counsellors who work with students ranging from kindergarten to grade 12. School counsellors were interviewed individually and asked about their views, experiences, approaches, outcomes, and challenges in relation to supporting students with mental health concerns. Data analysis explored the lived experience and essential themes of school counsellors working as mental health professionals.

Several studies have suggested that compassion satisfaction (CS) promotes counsellor wellness through its mitigating effects on compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious traumatization. CS also contributes to career longevity and to a sense of fulfillment, balance, and wellness that extends from counsellors’ professional to personal lives. Yet, to date, very little research has been done using counsellor wellness or CS as a primary focus. While the literature on CS is relatively new, even less attention appears to have been paid to what experienced counsellors actively do to maintain CS and therefore, their wellness as counsellors. The purpose of this study was to extend the literature on counsellor CS by asking experienced counsellors how they actively maintain CS in their work. Participants (N = 6) were counsellors in the Victoria area who had worked in the field for at least 10 years, had a minimum of a Masters degree, and who were experiencing CS at the time of data collection. A social constructivist perspective was used to frame the study, and narrative interviews were used to collect the counsellors’ stories of how they had maintained CS throughout their careers. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and 6 themes are reported. Findings suggest that counsellors can actively increase their likelihood of maintaining CS by: (a) maintaining boundaries; (b) practicing self-care; (c) cultivating self-awareness; (d) developing positive, fulfilling relationships; (e) engaging in ongoing learning; and (f) embracing variety. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for counsellor training programs, the personal and professional lives and retention of counsellors already in the field, directors of counselling agencies, and client care. / Graduate / 2015-04-23 / 0621 / 0622 / 0519 / 0769 / 0569 / alexsterling7@gmail.com