Counselling Case Study

Counselling Case Study
The following intervention analysis will utilise a planned verbal interaction, which occurred as part of ongoing care, during a 15-week placement on a Psychiatric Acute ward catering for Women aged 18-65. The client's informed consent was gained verbally, to use this conversation within my assignment. The client will be referred to as Carol. These measures are in accordance with the UKCC (1998) guidelines regarding consent and confidentiality. A client centred approach is to be employed as an aid to critical analysis of the intervention. It will firstly give a rationale for why this particular intervention was chosen and for the theoretical approach utilised. Biographical details of the client including events leading up to this point, previous conversations and incidents which are relevant to the chosen intervention, can be found in Appendix A. It will outline what a client centred approach involves. Firstly by defining its beliefs and essential core conditions, then by calling on the more practical micro-skills involved. The interaction will be analysed as each of these core conditions and skills are stated, thus helping in illustrating the helpful and not so helpful aspects of the interaction. Throughout the analysis, I will reflect upon how the intervention could have been more effective offering alternatives, which could have been more client-centred.

Rationale
The interaction, which is the focus of this study, is a prime example, in which I feel the need to offer a solution, in order to solve the problem, as I saw it. It was obvious to me that I did not have all the answers. This left me wondering whether a more 'realistic' approach would help. My practice up to this point has always been more directives and prescriptive, so logically I searched for an alternative, as my current practice was not having the desired effect. Therefore I chose to utilise a client centred approach and selected this particular intervention because I hoped firstly, to make sense of it and secondly, it could be inspiring to use a client led approach, as the prescriptive methods widely used in hospitals today (Morrison & Burnard 1990) had not helped. Another contributing factor were, staff attitudes toward the client. These were mostly negative. One member of staff said, " Good luck with her, you will soon find out, she's beyond help". This influenced my perception of Carol,