Page 326 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and Counseling

Notes 32.1 Family Consultation

The home and the family comprise the most important and informal agencies of education. The
family serves as the primary model for personality development. The family is considered by several
authorities as an extension of the individual personality. Therefore, it is rightly held that “family
systems of behaviour become individual systems of personality”.
Family group consultation is a method of counseling that begins with an analysis of the self-defining
processes in each one of the four families in the group. This method was introduced by Counseling
Centre, for Adults and the Medical School, Psychiatric Division of the Oregon State System of
Higher Education in the 1960s. The method was evolved to meet the several referrals, made by
school guidance counselors to the Centre, which showed no medical or psychiatric pathology but
were described as behaviour problems. The counselors first invite the concerned family of the client
for an initial interview. In this initial session the counselors meet as many members of the family as
are available and enter into a sort of ‘contract’ which leads to the other stages. The other families are
also chosen and met in this manner by the counselors. Usually no more than four families are
grouped. Proper care is taken in the choice and grouping of the families as well as orienting each
one of the families such that they are able to co-operate with the other family groups. The usual
length of a regular session is one and a half hours, split into two parts. The first part is spent with
all the members—adult and young—of all the families. As there could be as many as a score of them
in the room at each session, there is need for more than two counselors to be present to work with
the families. If there are sharp differences in age, experience, etc., between the members, two or
more sub-groups are formed. But as soon as rapport is established and warmth of relation is
experienced, the group is kept together as a whole for the entire session. The initial division is,
therefore, for practical reasons and serves as a ground work to reach an appropriate stage of rapport
when all the members are brought together. The session is terminated precisely on time to reduce
any anxiety that might be evident among the members.
Each family is seen by itself initially; then it is combined with others from the second session onwards.
There is nothing sacrosanct about the number of families to be combined. Two or three families may
be an ideal group. But it can be increased to four families if the need arises. Even single family
groups can be consulted. But the family peer-group effect will not be available in this case.
In actual practice the whole of the family will not be available to the counselor. Initially he has to
work with the members he has been able to establish contact with. Each of the families may be
sensitive about certain issues. The counselor would do well to leave these sensitive issues alone. The
families are helped to discuss life events and through this learn in subtle ways and gain several
insights. It is the job of the counselors to actively promote this intercourse. There is likely to be
initial resistance and the families should be allowed to overcome the resistance and learn to narrate
their stories naturally. Usually the family group consultation method needs as many as 8 to 12
sessions.
32.1.1 Counseling Families

Family counseling is concerned with the family system and changes that can be made in that system.
In a sense, the client is the family. If the interaction of the family with one of its individual members
leads to stress it is a symptom of a sick system. The symptom, if allowed to persist, may not only
cause much misery to the individual but also to the rest of the members in the family. Therefore, the
practical consequences are great. Different types of family counseling are in vogue. First there is the
conjoint family counseling in which the counselor meets the family and understands the patterns of
interaction within the family. The focus is on the family discord or problem. In this approach no
member of the family is dealt with individually. In the multiple impact counseling, several counselors
work with individual members of the family intensively over a period of three to four days. In this
approach also the focus is on the family system. The network counseling approach starts in a
concentric way, working with the unit (nuclear) family and proceeding towards the neighbours,

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