Unit rationale, description and aim
Youth workers use counselling techniques in their day-to-day practice to engage, support and empower young people, often with the objective of helping the young person re-engage into school, work and/or the community. Having these essential counselling skills means that youth workers have the means to help young people in a variety of areas, ranging from personal growth to social and personal relationships. Youth Workers often take a collaborative approach to providing assessment, planning, goal setting, facilitation and advocacy for options and services to meet a young person's holistic needs. Counselling with young people requires a youth-centred perspective and creative, flexible application of skills and knowledge. The aim of this unit is to introduce skills and approaches for responding to young people using appropriate micro-skills to synthesise theoretical frameworks and evaluate techniques that may be suitable for an individual young person and in intercultural contexts.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Identify the major issues for ethical counselling ...
Learning Outcome 01
Explain key standards required to set professional...
Learning Outcome 02
Define and develop the skills necessary to establi...
Learning Outcome 03
Practise the application of counselling skills in ...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics will include:
- What is counselling in the youth work context- how does it differ from other counselling contexts?
- Theories in counselling
Micro skills 1 - attending skills and observation
Micro skills 2 - questioning
Micro skills 3 - responding
Micro skills 4 - reflection of feeling
The process of counselling
- Incidental counselling with culturally diverse young people
Ethical issues
- Key standards required to set professional boundaries and maintain self-care
Assessment strategy and rationale
In order to pass this unit, students are required to achieve all learning outcomes and a final grade of 50% or better as an aggregate of all points from assessment tasks completed in this unit. A variety of assessment tasks have been designed to meet the learning outcomes of this unit and to ensure the development of graduate attributes.
To assist this, the following assessments tasks have been devised:
The essay requires students to write on the limitations and opportunities of youth work counselling in their work with young people. This requires students to consider the process of engaging with culturally diverse young people.
The Role Play task requires students to demonstrate counselling micro skills in an interview with young people. This task requires students to reflect on the role of counselling within youth work practice.
The test will assess students on knowledge obtained throughout the semester in readings, unit materials, lectures and/or discussions. and requires students to apply knowledge, theories, skills and attitudes appropriate to working with young people.
Overview of assessments
Essay Students will write an essay on the limitat...
Essay
Students will write an essay on the limitations and opportunities of youth work counselling and professional standards of behaviour in work with culturally diverse young people
30%
Test Students will be assessed on their knowledge...
Test
Students will be assessed on their knowledge obtained through the semester
40%
Role Play A filmed 10-minute role play demonstrat...
Role Play
A filmed 10-minute role play demonstrating application of counselling micro skills. This includes a 500-word written reflection.
30%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit engages students in active learning activities, such as reading, writing, discussion, role plays and problem-solving to promote analysis, synthesis and evaluation of class content in the context of lectures, where ideas are presented to students and tutorials where ideas are explored, practiced and discussed. Students build skills in counselling and use case studies and role plays to explore how what they have learned applies to real world situations.