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Professional Counseling and Social Justice

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Submitted By sissysunken04
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Running Head: COUNSELING AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Stepping up Counseling Responsibilities in a Socially Unjust Society

Abstract Social Justice has been an emerging issue over the last century in today’s service environment of helping professionals. I reviewed several articles where the main theme is; we live in a world of systems that allow for injustice and oppression. The Professional Counselor’s work deals with many of the symptoms that permit for this injustice and oppression. The articles had similar recurring traits that are stressed as important practices that need to be adopted by Professionals in the helping field to increase awareness of social justice and implement actions for change in a socially unjust society. I will explain the four main attributes: knowledge, awareness, research and advocacy and explain how education and focus in each area will contribute to the social justice inequities in the communities we practice. If professional counselors want to promote social justice, to be effective, there has to be a movement to take action on the burdensome stigmatisms and unfortunate inequities that human beings bring to professionals about the communities they live in.

Social justice and the counseling profession have roots that goes back to the 1900’s. It has always been understood from a social work point of view that problems such as depression, anxiety, and abuse often derive from economic and environmental issues. In order to help a client over come their issues it is necessary to address the policies and services available to them in the community they live in. Over the years, the professional counselors focus switched gears from counseling as a concern from a social justice perspective to a preference of individualized therapy due to managed care implementations.

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