Developing Helping Skills: A Step-by-Step Approach to Competency

This text helps beginning practitioners in a wide variety of helping professions -- including social work, psychology, counseling, marriage and family therapy, pastoral counseling, human services, and related areas -- learn fundamental skills and knowledge, as well as develop the ability to competently apply these skills.

The authors' unique teaching-learning system helps students effectively transfer the skills they learn in class to real-life settings. The system integrates five steps: reading about the knowledge related to professional practice and the skills and tasks necessary to work effectively with clients; thinking and writing about ideas related to the concepts discussed; applying the knowledge and skills to specific case situations; practicing the skills in simulated interviews within small groups; and evaluating student competency and giving students immediate feedback using simple tools.

Faculty using the MindTap® online learning solution have access to an array of additional teaching and learning tools, including video demonstrations of the appropriate use of helping skills (from the initial to final phase of work) and discussion questions related to the videos.

The book is organized into five sections. Section I covers information and tasks that students must master before beginning to see clients, e.g., the importance of self-understanding, ways of perceiving self and others, values, ethics and legal obligations, and professional roles. Chapters in the other sections describe skills and qualities used by practitioners and strengths and resources contributed by clients; students have ample opportunities to practice the skills. Videos in MindTap® help students bridge theory and practice by demonstrating the use of skills presented in the textbook.