Counseling

The most important function of counselling is to provide a service to the client that promotes the client’s autonomy and development which must take priority in the relationship within an ethical framework.  Having good intentions is not good enough as the counsellor’s awareness of the relationship into which the client and counsellor enter together and awareness of the impacts between the two people on each other is what facilitates the effectiveness and outcome (Bond, 2010).  The counsellor themselves is an instrument and their willingness to be a real person in the relationship (Corey, 2001).

Several changes to the UK criminal justice system have led to an increasing visibility and engagement with victims after decades of concentrating mainly on offenders.  Victim-focused policies have advanced from homogenising responses to victims of crime through to appreciating the diversity in victims’ needs and wants, while also seeking to reduce or prevent future victimisation.  However, several ‘victim-focused’ crime prevention policies are paradoxically dependent on the creation of a victim in the first place.  This paper considers this contradiction in relation to two recent Coalition Government proposals.  Both the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme and plans to criminalise stalking behaviours rely upon victimisation already having taken place.  The paper argues that these supposedly ‘preventative’ proposals are in fact responsive and problematic as their implementation relies upon the creation of victims.  Furthermore, it suggests that rather than effectively preventing abuse, victims’ voices are instead being used to enhance and expand legislation.  The paper suggests that criminal justice policies alone are unable to prevent violence against women and that more engagement needs to occur outside of the criminal justice arena. 

What aspects of emotional competence help protect people from stress, anxiety, and depression, and help to promote positive affect? A total of 163 university students completed a twowave study that involved measuring emotional competence and emotional well-being at 1-year intervals. As expected, Time 1 measures of emotional competence predicted Time 2 measures of well-being, after controlling for Time 1 measures of well-being. Specifically, ineffective problem orientation predicted increases in anxiety and stress, and decreases in positive affect. Difficulty identifying and describing emotions predicted increases in anxiety and decreases in positive affect. Finally, an aspect of difficulty managing emotions (i.e. rumination) predicted decreases in positive affect. Each emotional competence variable predicted unique variance after controlling for other significant variables. Wediscuss the implications of these findings for counselling practice.

"Background: The underlying goals of the present study were (i) to assess knowledge of and attitudes towards aging in a sample of Portuguese undergraduate students undertaking various degrees in health and welfare subjects, and (ii) to analyze the extent to which knowledge, attitudes and other factors were associated with interest in working with older adults.
Methods: The study was cross-sectional in design. The sample comprised 460 Portuguese undergraduate students enrolled in degrees in nursing, social work, and psychology. They were asked to complete questionnaires and quizzes, which were analyzed using contingency tables and one way analysis of variance for inter-group comparison, and then subjected to multivariate logistic regression analysis.
Results: Significant differences emerged between groups on knowledge, attitudes towards aging and interest in working with older adults, with both nursing and social work students displaying more positive attitudes, knowledge, and interest in working with older adults, when compared with psychology students. A regression analysis indicated that attitudes, knowledge, and previous formal contact were significant predictors of interest.
Conclusion: Interest in working with older adults was significantly related to positive attitudes, more knowledge and formal previous contact. Positive attitudes towards older adults can be promoted through interaction with faculty members and experts, knowledge acquisition about normative changes with age, and contact with healthy and impaired older adults."

"""Postfeminist Education? challenges a contemporary postfeminist sensibility grounded not only in assumptions that gender and sexual equality has been achieved in many Western contexts, but that feminism has gone ‘too far’ with women and girls now overtaking men and boys - positioned as the new victims of gender transformations. The book is the first to outline and critique how educational discourses have directly fed into postfeminist anxieties, exploring three postfeminist panics over girls and girlhood that circulate widely in the international media and popular culture. First it explores how a masculinity crisis over failing boys in school has spawned a backlash discourse about overly successful girls; second it looks at how widespread anxieties over girls becoming excessively mean and/or violent have positioned female aggression as pathological; third it examines how incessant concerns over controlling risky female sexuality underpin recent sexualisation of girls moral panics. The book outlines how these postfeminist panics over girlhood have influenced educational policies and practices in areas such as academic achievement, anti-bullying strategies and sex-education curriculum, making visible the new postfeminist, sexual politics of schooling.

Moving beyond media or policy critique, however, this book offers new theoretical and methodological tools for researching postfeminism, girlhood and education. It engages with current theoretical debates over possibilities for girls’ agency and empowerment in postfeminist, neo-liberal contexts of sexual regulation. It also elaborates new psychosocial and feminist Deleuzian methodological approaches for mapping subjectivity, affectivity and social change. Drawing on two UK empirical research projects exploring teen-aged girls’ own perspectives and responses to postfeminist panics, the book shows how real girls are actually negotiating notions of girls as overly successful, mean, violent, aggressive and sexual. The data offers rich insight into girls’ gendered, raced and classed experiences at school and beyond, exploring teen peer cultures, friendship, offline and online sexual identities, and bullying and cyberbullying. The data illuminates how and when girls take up and identify with postfeminist trends, but also at times attempt to re-work, challenge and critique the contradictory discourses of girlhood and femininity. In this sense the book offers an opportunity for girls to ‘talk back’ to the often simplistic either wildly celebratory or crisis-based sensationalism of postfeminist panics over girlhood.

This book will be essential reading for those interested in feminism, girlhood, media studies, gender and education."""

"Abstract This article introduces how a Social Research Community (CSI) has been constituted with 48 institutionalized elderly from the University Social Responsibility (MSW) and from a humanistic perspective. In this CSI, the psychological well-being of the institutionalized people were assessed with quantitative and qualitative methods from a proposal of Participatory Action Research (PAR). It begins thus an epistemological innovation process, with little precedent, when it comes to research and understand the welfare of the elderly. This first experience of CSI provides observations on the dimensional changes of Ryff¿s welfare during the aging process within the institution to participate in the study. Specifically, it shows the increase of the Dominion of Environment and fall of Autonomy and Purpose in Life. Also qualitative data are provided to help understand these changes.
Resumen: Se presenta cómo se ha constituido una Comunidad Social de Investigación (CSI) con 48 personas mayores institucionalizadas desde la Responsabilidad Social Universitaria (RSU) y desde una perspectiva humanista. En esta CSI se valora el bienestar psicológico desde las personas institucionalizadas con metodologías cuantitativas y cualitativas, y con una propuesta de Investigación-Actión-Partivcipativa. Se inicia así,
un proceso de innovación epistemológica, con escasos antecedentes, a la hora de investigar y entender el bienestar de las personas mayores. Esta primera experiencia de CSI aporta obsevaciones acerca de los cambios de las dimensiones del bienestar de Ryff durante el proceso de envejecimiento dentro de la institución participante del estudio. Concretamente, aparece el aumento del dominio del entorno y la bajada de la autonomía y del proposotio de la vida. También se aportan datos cualitativos que permiten entender el cambio.
Resum Es presenta com s'ha constituït una comunitat social d'investigació (CSI) amb 48 persones majors institucionalitzades des de la responsabilitat social universitària (RSU) i des d¿una perspectiva humanista. En aquesta CSI es va valorar el benestar psicològic de les persones institucionalitzades amb mètodes quantitatius i qualitatius, i amb una proposta d'investigació- acció participativa (IAP). S'inicia, així, un procés d'innovació epistemològica, amb escassos antecedents, a l'hora d'investigar i entendre el benestar de les persones majors. Aquesta primera experiència de la CSI aporta observacions sobre els canvis de les dimensions del benestar de Ryff durant el procés d'envelliment dins de la institució partícip de l'estudi. Concretament, apareix l'augment del domini de l'entorn i la baixada de l'autonomia i del propòsit en la vida. També s'aporten dades qualitatives que permeten entendre aquests canvis."

Objectives: The study presents new disability-free life expectancies (DFLE) estimates for France and discusses recent trends in the framework of the three ‘health and aging’ theories of compression, dynamic equilibrium and expansion of disability. The objectives are to update information for France and to compare two methods to analyse recent trends. Methods: DFLE at ages 50, 65 and in the 50–65 age group are computed for several disability dimensions, using data from five French surveys over the 2000s. Owing to scarce time series, we used two methods to assess trends and consolidate our conclusions: (i) decomposition of the DFLE changes using the available time series; (ii) linear regression using all the available estimates, classified by disability dimensions. Results: Trends in DFLE65 prolonged the dynamic equilibrium of the previous decades: increasing life expectancy with functional limitations but not with activity restrictions. Meanwhile, partial DFLE50–65 has decreased for various disability dimensions, including some activity restrictions, especially for women. Conclusion: France has recently experienced an unexpected expansion of disability in mid-adulthood while it is still on a trend of dynamic equilibrium at older ages. The study highlights the importance of monitoring trends in DFLE for various disability dimensions and broadens the scope of interest to the mid-adulthood.