Looking in from the outside: community counsellors’ opinions and attitudes to school counselling in Singapore

Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Low, Poi Kee
Abstract

Over the last decade, the movement towards the permanent presence of counsellors within schools has gathered pace in Singapore. As counsellors were introduced into more schools, there were opportunities for their community-based counterparts such as social workers, youth workers and other counselling practitioners to work with them. Through semi-structured interviews, this study explored the experiences and perceptions of counselling practitioners in community-based agencies, specifically Family Service Centres, on school counselling. Community counsellors were found to be supportive of the initiative but concerned about how the service was implemented, especially in relation to professional and ethical standards and maintenance of confidentiality standards. Community counsellors felt that their counterparts in schools lacked knowledge about community resources and that family work seemed beyond their capability, they also thought that former teachers or principals perhaps needed more help with the transition to a counselling role. These findings are discussed and it is recommended that community counsellors could be more involved in developing the new school counselling services.

Journal

Pastoral Care in Education

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Volume

32

ISBN/ISSN

1468-0122

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Issue

4

Pages Count

12

Location

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Publisher

Routledge

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Publisher Location

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Publish Date

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Url

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Date

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EISSN

N/A

DOI

10.1080/02643944.2014.974663