Course Introduction (Applied Social Science)

This course introduces us to Applied Social Science. Applied social science

is connected or related to social science. Social Science is a branch of science
that talks about human behavior in its social and cultural aspects. It studies the
society and the manner in which people behave and influence the world around
us. Social science tells us about the world beyond our experiences and can help
explain how our own society works.

While Applied Social Science are academic social science disciplines,

professions and occupations which seek to use basic social science knowledge to
make an impact on the daily life of communities, organizations and persons. It
uses and adapts abstract principles and ideas derived from the disciplines under
the Social Science, it helps in solving certain problems in our society or other
issues in the real world.

Lastly, it is very important to learn or to study about social science and

most especially applied social science because these teaches us to use some
disciplines from social science in solving or to provide solutions to different kind
of problems in the society we are living.
1. Disciplines of Counseling
1.1. Counseling
1.1.1. Definition

It is a process in guiding or helping someone during a stage of life

when reassessments or decisions have to be made about himself/herself on
the choices they have chosen and their life course. Counseling is one of
the fields of applied social sciences, it provides support to those individuals
who are affected or facing a diverse set of problems in their lives. it is
basically an art and a science wherein you endeavor to weigh the objective
and subjective facets of the counseling process. (Nystul,2003)

1.1.2. Goals of Counseling

A very significant component for any individual or group to attain

success is to have a goal. In counseling, its number one goal is to support
those individuals who are facing a diverse set of problems in their lives. A
more detailed and expansive counseling goals were identified by Gibson and
Mitchell (2003).

One of these goals is development goals, the counselor assists in

meeting or advancing the clients human growth and development including
social, personal, emotional, cognitive, and physical wellness. Then preventive
goals, the counselor helps the client avoid some undesired outcome. Another
goal is enhancement goals, it’s when the counselor helps its client in
enhancing their special skills and abilities.

There are more goals in counseling just like remedial goals, it’s
when you’re assisting a client to overcome and treat an undesirable
development. Then exploratory goals, you try to unlock new ways for your
client by examining options, testing of skills, trying new and different activities,
etc. Another goal is reinforcement goals, as a counselor you try to help
your client in recognizing, that what they are doing, thinking, and feeling is
fine.

The last three goals are cognitive goals, physiological goals, and
psychological goals. Cognitive goals involve acquiring the basic foundation
of learning and cognitive skills. Physiological goals involve acquiring the
basic understanding and habits for good health. And lastly, Psychological
Goals aids in developing good social interaction skills, learning emotional
control, and developing positive self – concept.

1.1.3. Scope of Counseling

The wide ranges of human problems create a widened scope and field of
counseling. Broadly, the scope of counseling includes individual counseling,
marital and premarital counseling, family counseling, and community
counseling.

Individual Counseling. A process through which clients work one-on-

one with a trained mental health clinician in a safe, caring, and confidential
environment. It is helpful for a variety of reasons, such as increasing
an individual's self-awareness, encouraging self-exploration, identifying
boundaries, enhancing communication skills and improving the use of healthy
coping skills.

Marital and premarital counseling. Marital counseling is

the process whereby a trained counselor assists married couples to resolv
e problems that arise and trouble them in their relationship; husband and
wife are seen by the same counselor in separate and joint counseling ses
sions focusing on immediate family problems. While premarital counseling is a
specialized type of therapy usually provided by marriage and family
therapists, is believed to offer benefit to all couples who are considering a
long-term commitment such as marriage. Typically, the goal of premarital
counseling is to identify and address any potential areas of conflict in a
relationship early on, before those issues become serious concerns, and
teach partners effective strategies for discussing and resolving conflict.
Partners seeking counseling before marriage may also find that premarital
counseling can help them better understand their expectations about marriage
and address any significant differences in a safe and neutral environment.

Family Counseling. It is designed to address specific issues that

affect the psychological health of the family, such as major life transitions
or mental health conditions. It may be used as the primary mode of
treatment or as a complementary approach. Families can benefit from therapy
when they experience any stressful event that may strain family relationships, such
as financial hardship, divorce, or the death of a loved one. In addition, it can be
effective in treating mental health concerns that impact the family as a whole, such
as depression, substance abuse, chronic illness, and food issues, or everyday
concerns, like communication problems, interpersonal conflict, or behavioral
problems in children and adolescents.

Family counseling aims to promote understanding and collaboration among family

members in order to solve the problems of one or more individuals. For example,
if a child is having social and academic problems, therapy will focus on the family
patterns that may contribute to the child's acting out, rather than evaluating the
child's behavior alone. As the family uncovers the source of the problem, they can
learn to support the child and other family members and work proactively on
minimizing or altering the conditions that contribute to the child's unwanted
behavior.

Community Counseling. a generic term for any of professional

counseling that treats dysfunction occurring within a group of related people. This
term describes a preventive system of counseling that works to combat
psychological impairment through the improvement and development of
community support. A community is defined as a group of interacting individuals
who share a commonality. This commonality can be anything from location of
residence to career interest, but a community counselor will use this common
characteristic to council groups of people.

1.1.4. Core Values of Counseling

The potential of every human being to change and to continue learning

throughout the lifespan, in formal and informal settings, and especially in
the environment of counseling and psychological services.

Strong relationships as the primary vehicle in helping others to learn

new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, including collaboration within
the university community and partnering with other offices to provide
comprehensive mental health services to students.

An emphasis on prevention of mental health problems via education,

intervention and outreach into the University Community.

1.1.5. Principles of Counseling

As a counselor, you should set aside your own value system in order
to empathize with the person during counseling. Mcleod (2003) highlighted
the importance of values, the ethical principles of counseling. Under the
ethical principles of counseling are principle of autonomy of individuals,
principles of non-maleficence, principle of justice, and principle of fidelity.

The principle of autonomy of individuals addresses the concept of

independence, the essence of this is allowing an individual the freedom of
choice and action. There are important things that should be considered in
this principle, like how decisions affect other people in the society and how
the actual person make a decision.

Principle of non-maleficence’s concept is to not harm others. This

principle considered as the most critical of all principles even though all
principles are equal. It reflects both the idea of not inflicting intentional harm,
and not engaging in actions that risk harming others.
 Principle of Justice simply means treating all individual fairly or
equally. If an individual is treated differently, as a counselor you must able
to offer a rationale that explains the necessity and appropriateness of
treating this individual differently.

Principle of Fidelity involves the notions of loyalty, faithfulness, and

honoring commitments. Both counselor and client must trust each other and
have faith in the therapeutic relationship if growth is to occur. Therefore,
the counselor must not threaten the therapeutic relationship nor leave
obligations unfulfilled.

2. Professionals and Practitioners in Counseling

2.1. Roles functions and competencies of counselors

Roles and Functions of Counselors

As a counselor, it is your responsibility and obligation to help your

client. It is your role and function to try and give a solution to your client’s
problem. Having these roles and functions as a counselor is a great power
and it comes with great responsibility. The roles and functions of a counselor
are individual assessment, individual counseling, group counseling and
guidance, career assistance, placements and follow-up, referral,
consultation, research, evaluation and accountability, and prevention.

Individual assessment seeks to identify the characteristics and

potential of every client. It promotes the client’s self-understanding and
assisting counselors to understand the client better. Individual counseling
is considered as the core activity through which other activities become
meaningful. It is a client–centered process that demand confidentiality.
Relationship is established between counselor and client. Group counseling
and guidance means providing organized and planned assistance to
individuals for an array of needs. Counselor provides assistance through
group counseling and group guidance. Career assistance is when counselors
are called on to provide career planning and adjustment assistance to clients.
Placements and follow-up are a service of school counseling programs
with emphasis on educational placements in course and programs. Referral
is the practice of helping the clients find needed expert assistance that the
referring counselor cannot provide. Consultation is the process of helping
a client through a third party or helping system improve its service to its
clientele. Research is necessary to advance the profession of counseling. It
can provide empirically based data relevant to the ultimate goal of
implementing effective counseling. Evaluation and accountability,
Evaluation is a means of assessing the effectiveness of counselor’s
activities. Accountability is an outgrowth of demand that schools and other
tax-supported institutions be held accountable for their actions. And lastly
Prevention, this includes promotion of mental health through primary
prevention using a social – psychological perspective.

Competencies of a Counselor

When we talk about the competencies of the counselor, there are

many areas but for now we will focus on the study of Mcleod(2003). There
are seven specific competence areas of counselors, and it includes
Interpersonal skills, counselors who are competent display ability to listen,
communicate, empathize, be present, aware of nonverbal communication,
sensitive to voice quality, responsive to expressions of emotion, turn taking,
structure of time and use of language. The second one is Personal beliefs
and attitude, counselors have the capacity to accept others, belief in
potential of change, awareness of ethical and moral choices and sensitive
to values held by client and self. Then conceptual ability, counselors have
the ability to understand and assess client’s problem and to anticipate future
problems and also to make sense of immediate process in terms of wider
conceptual scheme to remember information about the client. Personal
soundness, counselors must have no irrational beliefs that are destructive
to counseling relationships, self-confidence, capacity to tolerate strong of
uncomfortable feelings in relation to the clients, secure personal boundaries,
ability to be a client ; must carry no social prejudice, ethnocentrism and
authoritarianism.

Mastery of techniques, counselors must have a knowledge of when

and how to carry out specific interventions, ability to assess effectiveness
of the interventions, understanding the rationale behind techniques,
possession of wide repertoire of intervention. Then ability to understand
and work within social system, this would be compromise of awareness
of family and work relationships of client the impact of agency on the clients,
the capacity to use support networks and supervision ; sensitivity to client
from different gender, ethnicity , sexual orientation, or age group. And lastly
openness to learning and inquiry, counselors must have the capacity to
be curious about client’s backgrounds and problems; being open to new
knowledge.

2.2. Area of Specialization Where Counselors Work

According to Peter and Nisenholz (1995), there different areas of

specialization where counselors work. They identified eleven major areas of
counseling, namely, Child development and counseling, adolescent
development and counseling, gerontology, marital relationship
counseling, health, career/lifestyle, college and university, drugs,
consultation, business and industry, and lastly other specialties.

Child development and counseling includes parent education,

preschool counseling, early childhood education, elementary school
counseling, child counseling in mental health agencies, and counseling with
battered and abused children and families. While adolescent development
and counseling covers more or focuses on middle and high school
counseling. Gerontological counseling is unlike the first two because
gerontological focuses more on counseling older citizens, and it is considered
the fastest growing.
 Marital relationship counseling involves more on family and
relationship with partners and also separation between people.

Health offers possibility for nutrition counseling, exercise and health

education, nurses-counselor, rehabilitation counseling, stress management
counseling, holistic health counseling, genetic and more. Drugs focuses on
the area more on substance abuse counseling, alcohol counseling and drug
counseling.

In college and university, it focuses on students that needs guidance

when they take their first step in college. Also, people’s career or lifestyle,
it includes guidance on choices and decision-making pertaining to career or
lifestyle, guidance on career development.

There are also areas that focuses more on jobs or works just like
consultation, agency and corporate consulting, organizational development
director, training manager, industrial psychology specialist. Also, another area
is business and industry, training and development personnel, quality and
work-life or quality circles manager, equal opportunity specialist.

And other specialties, like phobia counseling, agoraphobia, self-

management, grief counseling, self-management.

2.3. Career opportunities of counselors

There are lots of opportunities in this world even career opportunities

for the counselors. They are given an opportunity to help in finding solutions
to solve the problems that some people are facing.

They can give effort to establish an encouraging relationship with

couple or family and appreciate the complications in the family system or do
marriage and family counseling. Counselors can also help in guiding
children or people who are in their adolescent stage, children and
adolescent counseling helps in coping skills through promotion of resiliency,
positive attachment relationship, emotional and intellectual intelligence, and
other qualities that promote optional development.

Instead of focusing on one individual, group counseling offers the

following: opportunities to members to learn from observing other group
members; can functions as helpers and helps; opportunities to discover that
you others have similar concerns; members are encouraged to offer help
to others; opportunities to enhance interpersonal skills; the therapeutic climate
created similar as the client’s family origin.

An evolving and challenging counseling field is career counseling.

This type of counseling aids individual on decisions and planning concerning
their career.

School counseling seeks to reach out to students who are facing a

diverse set of problems such as drugs, family, peers or gang involvement.
The job requires sensitivity to individual differences and considers diversity
in enhancing educational perspective. The job requires skills on consultation,
counseling’s exceptional students and with the ability to handle problems
such as drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, divorced or single parents, dropping
out of school.

Mental Health counseling is manifested in the challenges posed by

its clientele with mental disorders. Mental disorders include serious
depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse. Mental health counselors
have to be inventive, and creative to address these problems. The job
requires patience, humility, kindness and compassion.

2.4. Rights, Responsibilities, Accountabilities and Code of Ethics

The code of ethics helps in reminding the counselors about their

rights, responsibilities and accountabilities. It is divided into seven, including,
counseling relationship, confidentiality, professional responsibility, relationship
and other professionals, evaluation, assessment, and interpretation, teaching,
training, and supervision, and lastly research and publication.
 We are going to focus on first three areas which are counseling
relationship, confidentiality and relationship, and professional
responsibility. There are areas under these three. In counseling relationship
are client welfare, respecting diversity, client rights, clients served by others,
personal needs and values, dual relationships, sexual intimacies with clients,
multiple clients, group work, and fees.

Client welfare is when counselor’s primary responsibility is to respect

the dignity and promote the welfare of clients. They are also expected to
encourage client’s growth. Respecting diversity, counselors shall respect
differences and understand the diverse cultural backgrounds of their clients
and should avoid discrimination. Clients also have rights, client rights are
when counselors shall disclose the purposes, goals, techniques, procedures,
limitations, potential risks, benefits of the services to be performed and other
pertinent information to the client throughout the counseling process.
Counselors offer clients the freedom to choose whether to enter into a
counseling relationship and determine which professional will provide
counseling, except when the client is unable to give consent. Client served
by others is receiving services from another mental health professional, with
clients consent, inform the professional person already involved to develop
an agreement. Personal needs and values, counselors shall be aware of
their values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior and how these apply in a
diverse society and avoid imposing their values on clients. Dual
relationships, counselors are aware of their influential position over their
clients avoid the exploiting the trust and dependency of the clients.
Counselors should not accept as superiors or subordinates clients.
Counselors should not have any type of sexual intimacies with clients
and do not counsel persons with whom they have sexual relationship.
Counselors should not also engage with sexual intimacies with their former
clients within a minimum of two years. Multiple clients, in cases where
counselors agree to provide counseling services to two or more persons
who have a relationship, counselors clarify at the outset which person or
persons are clients and the nature of relationship they will have with each
other involved person. Group work, counselors screen prospective group
counseling/therapy participants to determine those with compatible needs. In
group setting, counselors take reasonable precautions to protect clients from
physical or psychological trauma. Prior to entering the counseling relationship,
the counselors clearly explain the clients all financial arrangements related
to professional fees.

Areas under confidentiality are rights in privacy, groups and families,

minor incompetent client, records, research and training, and consultation.
Right in privacy, counselors respect a client’s right to privacy and avoid illegal
and unwarranted disclosures of unwarranted information. The right to privacy may
be waived by the clients or their legally recognized representative. The general
requirement that the counselors keep the information confidential does not apply
when disclosure is required to prevent clear and imminent danger to the client or
others or when legal requirements demand that confidential information is be
revealed. Counselors who received information confirming that a client has a
disease known to be communicable and fatal is justified in disclosing information
to an identifiable third party, who by his/her relationship with the client is at high
risk of contracting the disease. When court orders the counselors to release
confidential information without client’s permit, counselors request to the court that
the disclosure should not be required due to potential harm to client or counseling
relationship. Groups and Families. In group work, counselors clearly define
confidentiality and parameters for the specific group being entered, explain its
importance, and discuss difficulties related to confidentiality involved in group
work. In family counseling, information about one family cannot be disclosed to
another member without permission. Minor incompetent clients are when
counseling clients who are minors or individuals who are unable to give
voluntary, informed consent, parents or guardians may be included in the
counseling process as appropriate. Records. Counselors maintain necessary
records for rendering professional services to their clients and as required by laws,
regulations, or agency or institution procedures. They are responsible for securing
 safety and confidentiality of any counseling record they create, maintain, transfer,
or destroy whether the records are written, taped, computerized, or stored in any
other medium. Counselors recognized that counseling records are kept for the
benefits of the clients therefore provide access to record and copies of record when
requested by competent clients unless it contains information that may be
misleading or detrimental to the clients. They obtain written permission from clients
to disclose or transfer records to legitimate third parties unless exception to
confidentiality exists. Research and training, use of data derived from
counseling relationships for purposes of training ,research , or publication is
confined to content that is disguised to ensure the anonymity of the individuals
involved. Identification of the client involved is permissible only when the client has
reviewed the material and has agreed to its presentation or publication. And lastly,
consultation, Information obtained in consulting relationship is discussed for
professional purposes only with persons clearly concerned with the case. Before
sharing information, counselors make efforts to ensure that there defined policies
that effectively protect the confidentiality of information with other agencies serving
the counselors clients.

Lastly for now, the areas under professional responsibility are

standards knowledge and professional competent. Standards knowledge, is
when counselors have a responsibility to read, understand, and follow the Code
of Ethics and Standards of Practice. Professional competent, counselors
practice only within the boundaries of their competence based on their
education, training, supervised experience, state and national professional
credentials and appropriate professional experience. Counselors will
demonstrate a commitment to gain knowledge, personal awareness,
sensitivity, and skills pertinent to working with diverse client population.

3. Clientele and Audiences in Counseling

Clientele and audiences of the counseling profession comes from

variety of settings. Counselors deal with different types of people that are
facing diverse set of problems. The clientele and audiences are mostly
people who abuse drugs, people who use tobacco, people who abuse
alcohol, women, older adults, people with AIDS, victims of abuse, and,
gay men and lesbian women.

3.1.1. Individuals

It is a personal opportunity to receive support and experience growth

during challenging times in life. Counseling can help one deal with many
personal topics in life such as anger, depression, anxiety, substance abuse,
with the relationship to the people around us and many more. Counseling
allows individuals to explore their feelings, beliefs, and behaviors, work
through challenging or influential memories, identify aspects of their lives
that they would like to change, better understand themselves and others,
set personal goals, and work toward desired change.

3.1.2. Groups and Organizations

A small group of people meet regularly to discuss, interact, and

explore problems with each other and the group leader. Group counseling
seeks to give students a safe and comfortable place on campus where they
can work out problems and emotional concerns. Members gain insight into
their own thoughts and behavior and offer suggestions and support to others.
In addition, people who have a difficult time with interpersonal relationships
can benefit from the social interactions that are a basic part of the group
counseling experience. Most groups composed of students of differing ages,
backgrounds and ex-periences. This helps to provide additional perspectives.

Counseling and therapy aren't just for individuals, couples, and groups.
Organizations can also benefit from the same techniques to help reduce
workplace anxiety, improve communication, enhance performance, and
support employees more thoroughly.
 3.1.3. Communities

A multifaceted approach combining direct and indirect services to help

community members live more effectively and to prevent the problems most
frequently faced by those who use the services. Their aim primarily at
populations who are most in need of mental health services and usually
most excluded from receiving them, such as ethnic minorities and the poor
and elderly. Community counselors' strategies reach out to the community is
to identify and work with groups who are at risk for certain problems such
as substance abuse; poor health; physical, emotional, and learning disabilities;
poverty; and emotional and physical abuse in order to reduce their incidence.

4. Settings, Processes, Methods, and Tools in Counseling

4.1. Settings
4.1.1. Government

Counselors are also present in various agencies of government or

institutions supported by the government that are into social welfare, health,
and education. Relevant agencies or institutions include public schools, public
social welfare agencies such as that for the youth, children, and the aging.

4.1.2. Private Sector

It is when counselors decide to do full time work as private

practitioners or engage in part–time private practice while employed by
community agencies. This is feasible if the counselor’s expertise and
specialization matches or relevant to an adequate client population in the
geographic area.

4.1.3. Civil Society

In civil society it is generally charities or non-profit and issue-based

centers or organizations mainly for abused women, abandoned children or
elderly, veterans, teachers, professionals or religious groups.
 4.1.4. Schools

Counselors are recognized especially in the preventive interventions

and developmental stage. There are elementary school counselors, junior
high school counselors, secondary school counselors, counselors in vocational
schools, counselors in higher education, and counselors in community and
junior colleges. The counseling service in the schools is usually located
under the student affairs program.

4.1.5. Community

It tackles about employment in community, agency, and other non-

school professional situations. Counselors can be found in community and
mental health agencies, employment and rehabilitation agencies, correctional
settings, and marriage and family practice.

5. Counseling services, processes and methods

Counseling and its processes

In counseling processes, there six stages that needs to be followed.

These stages are relationship building, assessment and diagnosis,
formulation of the counseling goals, intervention and problem solving,
termination and follow-up, research and evaluation.

The first stage or relationship building is the heart of counselling

process because it provides the force and foundation for the counselling to
succeed. It involves establishing rapport, helping the client to believe and
understand themselves, establish genuine interaction and slowly promote
counselling relevant communication.

The second stage is assessment and diagnosis, this stage is the

one of the most crucial stages. It serves as the window for the counsellor
to have a proper appreciation of the client’s condition. Analyzing what is
the root of client’s problem. The data that will be gathered in diagnosis will
be utilized in the formulation of goals.
 The third stage also known as the formulation of counseling goals,
goals sets the direction of the counseling process, it serves as the parameter
of work and the client-counselor relationship. Counselling goals may be
treated as a process goal or outcome goal. The client and counsellor must
agree on the counselling goals.

The fourth stage or intervention and problem solving, in this stage

there are specific things or guidelines that should be followed such as the
counselor has to provide a mapping of the different approaches offered,
describing the role of the counselor and client in each procedure, Identifying
the possible risks and benefits that may come, and estimate the cost of
each procedure.

There is an identified six-stage model in problem solving and the

stages under it are problem detection, problem definition, identification
of alternative solution, decision-making, execution, and verification.

The next stage is stage five which is termination and follow-up.

The essential goal in counselling is to witness a client progress on his/her
own without the assistance of the counselor. There are four identified
components of termination, these are the discussion of the end of
counselling, review of the course of counselling, closure of the counsellor-
client relationship, and discussion of the client’s future and post-counselling
plan.

The last stage or also known as the research and evaluation. This
stage can be undertaken at any point in the counselling stage. Research
and evaluation are fundamental part of the evaluation. Results of the research
provide a scientific appreciation of the counselling situation.

Methods of Counseling