CAREER COUNSELING ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED 1
Career Counseling Economically Disadvantaged
Danhua Kong
Ball State University
Abstract
The field of career counseling has paid intensive attention to explore and address the vocational needs of social underrepresented groups which consists of racial minorities, people with disabilities, and females. Little efforts, however, have been made to examine the needs and difficulties people with economical disadvantages have, not mentioncareer-counseling models that are specifically designed to meet their needs. This article clarifies the term “economically disabilities” and explores what career-related problems people who are economically disadvantaged may face. Then it proposes an explicit counseling procedure in which government training programs are advocated to attend, specific counseling techniques and strategies are provided and explained. Since outcome assessment is increasingly important in current research and practices, pre- and post-test with well-designed assessment tools are recommended to use.
Keywords: economically disadvantaged, counseling strategies, outcome assessment
Career Counseling Economically Disadvantaged
In the past two decades, vocational needs of underrepresented groups such as racial minorities, women, people with disabilities have been examined and intensively studies in not only research, but also theory development of vocational psychology. Massive gains have been made though, there is little knowledge about issues people with economical disadvantages face due to less attention paid to this group (Richardson, 1993).
The Economically Disadvantaged
Fitzgerald and Betz (1994) once raised a question regarding the meaning of career development “Is career development a meaningful term in the lives of a majority of the population?” (p. 104). Causes of the question was they findings that for those underpaid workers who are lingering along the poverty line, or those unemployed or discouraged workers who have already given up looking for jobs, work may not be the central to their lives anymore. Although they may have the realization that work gives meaning to their lives and help them out of the current situation, being underemployed or discouraged in occupations, or being in poverty for a considerably long time contributes to their passive attitudes towards working (Brown, 2012).
“Everyone who is in an unfavorable economic or social circumstance” (Brown, 2012, p. 126) was broadly categorized as disadvantaged, which includes some members of minority groups, disabled workers, some divorced or single women with children, the poor, educational dropouts and the forth. According to Miles (1984), however, this term only describes people who are economically deprived or poor. Miles (1984) stated that economically disadvantaged peoplewho are chronically poor, unemployed or newly disadvantaged, and underemployed. Those who were born into or raised in poor families without adequate recourses to meet basic needs are called chronically poor; those who can use savings or other available resources to temporarily get through unemployment periods are categorized into the unemployed or newly disadvantaged group; group of people who are doing unskilled jobs with insufficient incomes to go beyond the poverty standards are called working poor.
Career-related Problems
According to Water and Moore (2011), most of the unemployed, economically deprived people have low self-esteem and high levels of depression. Withoutadequate educational skillsor career training, they usually havedifficulty in adjusting to the workplace or obtaining vocational training, which leads toconfidencediminished regarding the possibility to maintain a relatively preferred job.
It’s not surprising for me to guess that besides the problems mentioned above;they haven’t developed clear occupational self-identity,since the deprivation of education at young ages and the limit of career choice at job-hunting market. The lack of career self-identity encumbers counselors while finding ways to facilitate these people gain favored jobs. Therefore, helping clients establish clear self-understanding and realistic career expectations has become incumbent on career counseling.
Counselor’s Role andCounselingTechniques
Brown (2012) stated thatcounselors should provide economically disadvantaged people with career development services, in ordertohelp address their short-term and long-term goals. Addressing short-term goals means to involve clients in short-term planning to meet their basic needs, whilemeeting long-range goals means to help them find out what they are willing to do. There is a four-part program designed to confront clients’ career-related problems (Brown, 2012), including accessing to basic adult education and specific vocational training, receiving personal and career counseling, getting career information and decision-making skills, as well as taking appropriate vocational training and placement.
Readiness for Career Decision Making
Since every person has unique career problems, he or she can only be best served by tailored combinations of career resources and services (Sampson,Peterson, Reardon, 1991). Career decision-making readiness assessmenthelps counselors identify clients presenting levels of career development, so that they are able to choose appropriate service inventories for each individual client: those with high readiness for occupational decision making have the potential to be served mosteffectively by self-help services; those with moderate readiness may suit best to brief staff-assisted services; while low readiness individuals may benefit most from individual case-managed services. Simple screening questions can be used to determine clients’readiness for occupational decision making, and screening instruments can also be employed if needed (Sampson, Peterson & Reardon, 1998).
Some instruments that can be used in readiness screening are: the Career Decision Scale, measures career certainty and indecision; My Vocational Situation, measures vocational identity, need for information, and barriers in career decision making; the Career DecisionProfile, measures decidedness, comfort, self-clarity, knowledge about occupations and training, decisiveness, career choice importance; the Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory, measures job satisfaction, work involvement, skill development,dominant style, career worries, interpersonal abuse, family commitment, risk-taking style, and geographical barriers; the Career Maturity Inventory-Revised, measures career maturity,attitudeand career maturity competence (Sampson,Peterson, Reardon Lenz, 2003).
Government Training Programs
After deciding which service potentially works best for a certain client, counselor could encourage highly ready clients to take government training programs with regard to gain some basic career-related education and training. According to Friedlander, Greenberg & Robins (1997), Adult Basic Education, General Educational Development (GED) preparation, and vocational education are available through community colleges and adult education schools,andall of them include at least one of the following services:
Remedial education in reading and math, vocational training in specific occupational skills, subsidies paid to private sector employers to hire program participants for a specified period of time in order to provide them with on-the-job training, short-term subsidized "work experience" positions (paid or un-paid) at government or nonprofit agencies to give participants an opportunity to build an employment record and ac-quire general work skills, and job search assistance (including training in resume preparation and interviewing, help in job finding, and direct job placement). In addition, financial support, child care, personal and career counseling, and expense reimbursements during training are sometimes provided(p. 1810).
Career counselors should not overlook these programs; instead, they should encourage theseclients to benefit from themregarding educational and interpersonal skillstraining, and on-position working experience attainment.
Personal and Career Counseling
In Water and Moore (2011)’s research, unemployed persons reported lower self-esteem and higher depression levels comparing with employed persons. Additionally, I think counselor should be alert to the lack of clear vocational identity in these clients, and help each of them develop or consolidate one. I will introduce some effective techniques counselors can use to deal with clients’ these problems.
Constructive and narrative approaches in counseling.Since the beginning of counseling sessions is about building work alliance with clients and getting information about clients’ presenting problems, I think narrative counseling will be more effective than standardized assessment inventories. Owing to the lack of adequatecareer education and training, these people may have limited range of interests and occupational abilities. Their career values may also be restrained by their current economic situations and influenced by their past working experience. So that the results of assessment may not be very positive, and if counselors mainly rely on the results, they may not be able to find strengths and hopes. One of the main tasks for counseling, however, is to detect positive factors in clients’ lives and reinforce them.
Since how people think about themselves and how they process what they learn play important roles in their self-identity development, the constructive approachhelps to identify clients’ life patterns, draw meaning from their lives, and find out their goals for the future. Narrative counselingallows clients to tell their life stories and construct their future career, in which counselors are able to find success and strengths(Gysbers, 2009). By changing clients’ story-telling, on the other hand, facilitates the progress to gain higher self-esteem and more positive attitude towards future. Specific techniques such as Card Sort, Career-O-Gram, Life Chapters and Lifeline will be helpful.
Use of mindfulness meditation.Given most economically disadvantage people are at different levels of depression, educating or facilitating relaxation can be very helpful in achieving counseling goals. According to Huppert and Johnson (2010), the practice of mindfulness meditation “allows an individual to be aware of their surroundings, to develop a sense of sensitivity in perceiving every moment, and enabling them to accept stressful situations, instead of avoiding them” (pp. 264), because rather than encouraging evaluation or thinking on past actions neither the uncertain future, it requires people to focus on their thoughts, actions, and present moments non-judgmentally. By introducing to and guiding practice mindfulness meditation, economically disabled people who have been suffering from worries and depression for a long time will achieve a state of tranquility, obtain a clearer picture of their thoughts and inner states, and probably become capable of perceiving things and situations more effectively.
Career Information and Decision-making Skills:Hope Infusion
Founded by Snyder (2000),the hope theory indicates that hope has three primary components: a goal, thoughtsabout how to achieve the goal, and themotivation or willingness to achieve the goal. From this point of view, hope can serve as a framework for counselors to examineclients’ work-related goals, ideas, and motivation. Based on thistheory, the Work Hope Scale was designed to assess thepresence of work hope. Three studies conducted byJuntunen and Wettersten (2006) which werebased on a diverse sample including welfare recipients, economicallydisadvantaged youth, college students, and community members, showed that the WHSis stable and validin distinguishing among groupsthat can expect to have hope about work situations on the basis of their access of economic resources. Findingsfrom these studies suggest that people without sufficient resources may be not only struggling in the pursuing career goals but also, in identifying suchgoals.
Given the fact that work hope is of importancein career decision making, and there are many obstacles confronting the economically disadvantaged, what should counselors do to help? From my point of view, providing career information and encouragingclients to gain realistic and practical information are both good means to assist clients overcome negative viewstoward work hope. Once clients have managed to deal with depression or other problems, they can use inventories to gain better understanding of their interests, abilities and values, also get some information and knowledge about the careers they like. Online tools such as O* NET and DISCOVER can be used for these purposes. Afterwards, engaging in actions such as“interviews with worker, work samples, plant visits, and synthetic work situations may help clients understand a certain job, relate that job with self and to attainable goals, and perhaps acquire usable role models” (Brown, 2012, p. 128) gives clients chances to accumulate experience and information.
VocationalTraining and Placement
Once these clients enter or reenter the exploration stage defined by Super(Gysbers, 2009),counselors need to facilitate their process of clarifying what they want to do with certain realization of their abilities, interests, and values. Encouraging exploratory behaviors such as internship from counselorshelp themnarrow down optionsand finally start doing vocational plan. When these clients are implementing career choice, counselors can help them with resume, interview skills or interpersonal skills.
Outcome Assessment
With the increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice, outcome assessment becomes a vital component of counseling practice in deciding whether the counselors are providing effective service and whether certain treatments are helpful for certain kind of population. In career counselingpeople with economical disadvantages, outcome assessment will also be used for both evaluation of the counseling service and clients’ progress in career decision making and employment readiness.
One of the most common forms of outcome assessment is the pre-and post-test. As I’ve mentioned before, instruments such as Career Decision Scale and My Vocational Situation will implemented at the beginning of counseling session to assess clients’ readiness of career decision making. At the end of counseling practice, the same tools can also be used as post-test. Counselors need to be aware of variables that may influence the results of assessment, for example cultural factors, age, education levels, gender and the forth.
Summary
According to what has known about economically disadvantaged people’s emotional or mental situations, counselors should to be alert to signs of low self-esteem and depression. Once they are in this state, counselors’ primary obligationis to identify causes and help them address these negative emotions toward themselves and the world. In addition, counselor should encourage clients to learn and implement solution-focused mechanisms such as job seeking,work adjustment, and interpersonalskills to secure their jobs and to increase their self-esteem.
Starting from clarifying the definition of “economically disadvantaged”, this article explored possible problems the economically disadvantaged may have and provided a specific procedure of counseling which consists of taking career decision making readiness assessment at the very beginning of counseling session and taking the same one at the end of counseling servicewith the purpose to evaluate the effective of certain practice and improve their service in the future. Besides of conducting personal and career counseling, counselors are advocated to make full use of government training service in helping clients.
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