D2: Evaluates the effectiveness of the use of counselling skills in aiding client’s decision-making process:
The ultimate goal of counselling is to enable individuals to make own decisions in life and act accordingly in order to change habits or overcome difficulties that had prevented them to achieve self-actualisation, build self-esteem or just live happily as general.
In order to achieve that professionals are using variety of counselling skills and theories for support. One of the theories that is being used is Egan’s skilled helping module. Following the theory, professional first explore the reasons of something to occur and the fears that an individual has that prevent him to achieve his goals. This can be used my methods such as asking questions, paraphrasing and checking with the client on the side of the counsellor in order to provoke the individual to reflect on his own feelings and experiences. The Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can also be used in order to explore the past of the client and how that had reflected his future. In order that phase to be successful and ethically correct, the individual should find his own conclusion about the situation instead of the professional giving his own ideas and opinions of why it all had resulted in such a way for the client.
The second stage of the modal is to develop a preferred scenario for the person. In this stage the counsellor should challenge the thought processes of the client as well as patterns they have that contribute towards their situation. This challenging proves does not mean that they should point what they thing is wrong and how it should be handled. Instead, professionals should encourage the individual to think of what they want to change and to what development that might lead. Processes of identifying strengths and weaknesses can be used in order to help the client – looking at the Johari