The management of counselling and psychotherapy agencies

161 Pages·1998·52.84 MB·English

by  Kitchin

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
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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.)