FOR The Management of Counselling and Psychotherapy Agencies PROFESSIONAL SKILLS FOR COUNSELLORS The Professional Skills for Counsellors series, edited by Colin Feltham, covers the practical, technical and professional skills and knowledge which trainee and practising counsellors need to improve theircompetence in key areas oftherapeutic practice. Titles in the series include: Medical andPsychiatricIssuesfor Counsellors Brian Daines, linda Gask andTim Usherwood Personal andProfessionalDevelopmentfor Counsellors PaulWilkins Counselling by Telephone Maxine Rosenfield Time-Limited Counselling Colin Feltham ClientAssessment Stephen Palmer and Gladeana McMahon (eds) Counselling, Psychotherapy and the Law PeterJenkins Contracts in Counselling Charlotte Sills (ed.) Counselling Difficult Clients Kingsley Norton and Gill McGauley Learning andWriting in Counselling Mhairi MacMillan and Dot Clark Counselling andPsychotherapy in Private Practice RogerThistle ReferralandTermination Issuesfor Counsellors Anne Leigh The Managefilent of Counselling and Psychotherapy Agencies Colin Lago and Duncan Kitchin SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi © ColinLagoand Duncan Kitchin 1998 First published 1998 All rights reserved. No partofthis publicationmay be reproduced, storedina retrievalsystem, t.,msmittedor utilized inanyform orbyany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordingorotherwise,without permissionin writingfrom the Publishers. SAGEPublicationsLtd 6 BonhillStreet London EC2A4PU SAGEPublicationsInc. 2455TellerRoad Thousand Oaks, California91320 SAGEPublicationsIndiaPvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market GreaterKailash - I New Delhi 1]()048 BritishlibraryCataloguinginPublicationdata Acataloguerecordfor this bookisavailable from the BritishLibrary. ISBN0 803979940 ISBN0 803979959(pbk) libraryofCongresscatalogcardnumber98-61248 Typeset by Photoprint,Torquay, Devon PrintedinGreat BritainbyBiddiesLtd, Guildford, Surrey Contents Foreword ~i Acknowledgements xiii 1 Laying the Foundations: Creating a Counselling Service 1 Historic Origins 2 Why Counselling?Why Now? 3 ARationale for Creating a New Counselling Service 6 StakeholderAnalysis 10 Summing Up 12 2 Building a SoundStructure: Management Issues 13 Primary Structures - the Location and Premises 14 Staffing Structures 19 Facilitating and Evaluating the Client's Process through theAgency 23 Going Public: Promotion andAdvertising 24 Management Committees,Advisory Groups and Boards ofTrustees 30 Insurance 32 Key Points 33 3 StaffRecruitment and Selection 35 JobAnalysis 36 Job Description 38 Person Specification 40 Recruitment 43 Selection 44 4 Ensuring Competent, Professional and Safe Practice 52 Competence 53 vi Contents Professionalism and Safety 58 Appropriateness 69 Accountability 72 Resources 74 5 Dailyworking Practices 75 Reception andThresholdActivities 76 Waiting lists 81 Assessment and Diagnosis 85 Payment ofClient Fees 86 Complaints Procedures 92 Case Notes andAgency Records: Confidentiality and Appropriateness 92 Referrals to and Relationships with OtherAgencies 95 The Management ofAccounts and Salaries 96 Key Points 97 6 Managing Crisis 98 Managing Clients' Crises 98 ManagingAgency Crises 101 AMajor Crisis within the Parent Organization 107 Telephone Helplines 107 The Internet 108 Resources 109 RegisteringYour Organization 109 7 Managing Managing! 110 T~e Manager as Oppressor? 114 Where to put the Emphasis? Management Issues or Clinical Issues? 115 The Manager as Intermediary 115 The Impact ofPersonality on Managing: Enhancing Awareness 116 The Manager as . . . Further Dynamic IssuesAffecting the Management Process 125 ConcludingThoughts 134 Appendix 135 AUniversity Counselling Service - Complaints Procedure 135 Bibliography 137 Index 143 Foreword The composition ofthis book has taken much longer than either our contract with Sage specified or indeed ourown expectations forecast. Quite literally, oneofusfeels he has been'sleepingonit' for some time, having put the publishers' advance towards a new bed! Rather more seriously, the length of this incubation period has, in part, been determined by the myriad challenges we have been faced with in attempting to address and describe precisely what is required in the management of counselling and psycho therapy agencies. Almost two decadeshave nowgone bysinceoneofthe authors conducted a survey on the establishment ofcounselling services (Lago, 1981). Many such agencies were then and continue to be, established through the vision, commitment and enthusiasm of theirfounders (thesubjectofChapter 1).The taskofmanagement of these organizations has seldom in our experience been con sidered as ofprimaryimportance, certainlyin the earlyyears.The vision and commitment have often acted as the binding force for collaboration and productivity. The task of management has, of course, had to be operationalized by various people at various times during these formative stages but oursense is that the need for management in its formal sense has only become fully neces sary in the developmental stage following the birth and early infancy of the organization. Before that, enthusiasm and energy will have sufficed to get all the jobs done. The profession ofcounsellingand psychotherapyhas expanded considerably in the last decade ofthe twentieth century and this development hasfacilitated theestablishmentofmanymorecoun selling organizations, a wide range ofliterature, codes ofpractice and ethics, new training courses and new research. Clients have viii Foreword also become much more sophisticated and knowledgeable of the field and they in their turn (very appropriately), demand the highest standards ofprofessional practice. These developments will increasingly place demands on organ izations offering therapy that they be managed soundly, ethically and professionally.We believe that this book is therefore a timely contribution to those in the profession concerned with the optimum delivery of therapeutic practices. The management of counselling and psychotherapy services should be of concern to all practitioners, not just those appointed as managers. As Carroll andWalton (1997: 1) have so succinctly expressed it: understanding that there is more to counselling than what happens in the counselling room enables counsellors to have an eye and perspectives on the'contexts' in which the counselling takes place. The overall management task then, in counselling and psycho therapy organizations, is to provide and sustain an optimal context in which therapeutic services may be delivered with sensitivity, care and professionalism. Despite the assertion above that management should be of concern to all practitioners involved in counselling organizations we are aware that, in practice, a vast number of therapists want little or nothing to do with management, its activities and pro cesses. At its most extreme, this attitude expresses itself in the oversimplistic division between counselling as the pure ethical, uncontaminated expression ofhonourable intention and manage ment as a tainted and tainting experience full of compromise, domination and Machiavellian intent! The authors know eachotheras a result ofworkingat Sheffield University; one as a (now semi-retired) lecturer in management studies who is also trained as a Gestalt therapist and the other who is the Director of the University Counselling Service. Each author haswrittenseveralchapters, and as aconsequence readers maybecomeawareoftheirdifferentstyles.We hopeand trust that any dissonance in these styles will not prove overly problematic. Their cumulative experiences have incorporated working in industry, theyouthservice, schooland highereducation, lecturing in management, providingconsultancyandstafftrainingto awide range ofstatutory, industrial, commercial and voluntary organiza tions, involvement with counselling and psychotherapy training Foreword ix courses, stress management teaching and working for and on behalfofemployee assistance programmes. Various words have been used interchangeably in the text in orderto avoid repetition and/orcause readerboredomand stress! Such word clusters include all those terms that relate to the counselling organization and they include: agency, office, service, institution and organization. Unless specified otherwise in the text, references to colleagues, staffand personnel refer to all the categories of staff employed within a service (eg. receptionists, cleaners, counsellors) whether paid or voluntary.The terms man agerand management are used interchangeably in the recognition that a variety of models of management are presently practised including those ofthe lone manager, job shares and management by committee. We have also used the terms counselling, psycho therapyand therapeutic servicesinterchangeablyto maintain both reader interest and consistency with the humanistic (American) literature. We have attempted, as much as possible, to take into account the management needs ofthe complete spectrum ofcounselling and psychotherapy agencies, from impoverished voluntary pro jects operating a time-limited phoneline service two nights per week to professionally established organizations with full-time staffing complements. Our initial meetings were consumed by brainstorming ideas, oneofwhich attempted just to list the types oforganizations now offering counselling and psychotherapy. This list included the following: • national phonelines (Childline, HIV helplines) • counselling/psychotherapy in GP surgeries • specialist psychotherapy units in the NHS • school psychological services • employee assistance programmes • voluntary organizations (Rape Crisis, Cruse, etc.) • Relate (and other national bodies) • women's therapy centres • youth counselling agencies • counselling services related to conception, pregnancy, abortions, insemination, etc. • 'crisis' response teams and organizations (post-traumatic incidents, bank holdups, etc.)
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