COUNSELLING PRACTICES FOR SPECIAL
NEED POPULATIONS
BY
DR MALAMI UMAR TAMBAWAL
EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS UNIT
FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND EXTENSION SERVICES
USMANU DANFODIYO UNIVERSITY,
SOKOTO.
Abstract
The paper discussed the need for change of approach for counselling
services from the hitherto school setting, to a more generalized view of the
whole fabric of the society thereby limiting its scope to special need
populations who by the nature and peculiarity of situations demand a
specialized approach in order to resolve their psycho-social and academic
problems. The task of counselling as observed in this paper, therefore, is
giving the individual the opportunity to define, explore, discover and adopt
ways of living a more satisfying and resourceful life within the social,
educational and vocational groupings within which he or she identifies or
finds him/herself. The paper examined the counselling needs of a segment of
the special population viz: the Youth, Drug Abused,
Handicapped/physically challenged and retirees, and preferred certain
strategies for counselling such groups. Recommendations were also given
for meeting the challenges counselling faced in order to address the issues
of the populations such as that. Such that the Counsellor based training
Curriculum in our Universities and Colleges of Education should be
broadened and enlarged, so that trainees would come to terms with the
specific needs of counselling clients with special problem during practical
attachments. The paper concluded by employing the Counselling
Association of Nigeria (CASSON) to brace up and face the enormous
challenges of Counselling the special need populations.
Introduction
Counselling outside the school setting is receiving increased attention
globally because of the existing complexities of life ranging from
urbanization, globalization and technological break through which is
bringing a lot shift in people’s way of life either by way of job creation and
adaptation to it or by way of living in urban and rural areas. Individuals
today face a lot of challenges some are natural, or through illness and
accidents or as a results of man’s innovation and creation, thus making them
to require a special assistance in order to cope with demanding situation in
which they found themselves. Counselling which is aimed at helping individuals to resolve critical life issues can be at hand to see how such
groups could be assisted.
The growing economic hardships of our times, unemployment
problems, health related issues, growing demand for accommodation by
individuals, the traumas of political and religious upheavals all make certain
people fall into some anxieties that may lead them to require special
attention and thus in turn make them special population. The thrust of this
paper is to identify some of these groups and come up with the appropriate
counselling strategies that can be used to assist them.
Yakubu (2000) asserted that a special population is any group of
people identified with certain empirical evidences or features that
distinguished them from the normal persons. These make them “a special
population” that are cannot help admiring them in a special way, due to the
features that make them strange from all others. It should however, be noted
that the features do not only involve negative qualities but also positive ones.
Anything that makes one look or behave different from others make one a
special.
Counselling is viewed as a personalized, intimate interview or
dialogue between a person experiencing some emotional, social, educational,
physical, and vocational problems and a professional counsellor. It can also
be seen as a service that helps individual to solve problems and learn to cope
with these problems that are not easy to solve. This is why the special needs
population can be focused so that they are assisted out of their needs.
Counselling is designed to remove the emotional, psychological and
personal social roadblocks placed in the way of an individual by the multidimensional problems of the day to day life.
The involvement of counselling with special population therefore is to
improve and possibly remedy the challenges, facing people with special
needs. The educational challenges facing these category of people are quite
obvious and they need new strategies in resolving through counselling. This
is because according to Ipaye (1981), the individual learns new ways if
interacting, new ways of obtaining information, new ways of making
decisions, and new ways of responding to the environment and new ways of
interacting. The task of counselling therefore as seen by Ipaye (1981),
Denga (1990), Mallum (1983), Okon (1983), Akinboye (1982) and Bulus
(1989) is to give the individual the opportunity to define, explore, discover
and adopt ways of living a more satisfying and resourceful life within the
social, educational and vocational groupings within which he or she is
identified or finds himself or herself. The challenges of life has made some
people feeling as not existing well, but through education as a tool for moral,
social, economic, political and technological development, has affected
some changes in human lives and the society as well. Human communities
have used education to improve their standard of living, develop new
methods and skills of production, so is the need of counselling practices for
special need populations.
Special Need Population
Depending upon the context one wishes to stand, the earlier definition
which states that special population is any group of people identified to be
different from other people, is adopted in of this paper.
Yakubu (2000)
presented the following as special need population:
(1) Drug abused
(2) Handicapped
(3) HIV/AIDS patients
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(4) Stressful and anxiety patients
(5) Retirees
(6) Widows and widowers
(7) The women
(8) The Adolescents
(9) The negative self concept people
(10) The Nomads
(11) The unemployed
(12) The orphans
(13) The riverine people
(14) The prisoners, etc.
However, Bulus (2009) also identified the following as special need
population:
(1) Marital and family segments
(2) Women
(3) The aged
(4) Exceptional persons
(5) Youths
(6) Victims of crises
(7) Workers
(8) Persons requiring rehabilitation and reintegration.
Having seen the varied views on special populations, this paper
focused on the following, which does not exhaust the groups but for
convenience of presentation.
The groups are: The Youths, Drug Abused,
Handicapped/Physically challenged, and retirees.
The Youths.
Carew (2009), opined that, the youths constitute a fairly good size of
the national population. The characteristics of the youths and the need to
effectively serve them make it imperative for counsellors to respond to their
concerns. Psychologists and sociologists generally agree that the period of
youth is characterized with high demonstration of energy, zest and unrest.
In line with this, Bulus (2009) stated that, issues surrounding the youths
include: choice of friends, consequences of complex changes in society,
unemployment, drug addiction, cultism, examination malpractices,
consequences of physical, emotional and psychological changes etcetera.
Counsellors would need coping skills to meet the youth desires and
aspirations. They require personal counselling for all the concerns to make
wise rational and scientific lasting choices/decision by the society.
The youth that fall into the category of special population can be
identified as the Area Boys, militant youth of Niger Delta and creeks, the
religious fanatics, the truants and drug abused. The area boys are most often
used by politicians for political campaigns and vote rigging and thereby
discarded after elections to cause havoc to members of the general public.
The militants for social and economic reasons rake havoc in the Niger Delta
thereby causing shortfall in Petroleum products activities which affects
Nigeria’s international trade and power production in the country. Some
unpatriotic Nigerians and misguided individual here used youths to create
religious crisis, especially in the Northern part of the country. The
repercussions of such religious crisis have turned out to be expensive in
terms of human lives and property. The social and psychological damage
cannot be quantified. Some of the indicators of crisis among youth as
opined by Nwakaibie (2006), are sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, cultism, amorality and behavioural disorders that have reached alarming proportions
and demand counsellors paying attention to them.
It is in this regard that Denga (2009) opined that counselling
psychology is replete with behavioural contingencies that can be used to
modify maladaptative behaviour, chronic frustration, misplaced aggression,
excessive love for cupidity (or money) and other assorted or variegated
cargo of criminal behaviours.
In order to modify maladaptive behaviour,
Lar, Okpede and Bulus (1992) suggested the following techniques:
1) Negative Reinforcement: This involves punishment for exhibiting
unwanted behaviour. It ranges from painful physical stimulation and
deprivation to weaker reinforcer such as verbal criticism, hostility or
simple expression of dislike.
2) Positive Reinforcement: This means rewarding people for exhibiting a
specific wanted behaviour.
3) Extinction:
This is otherwise referred to as the ignore technique in
counselling, it is used to refer to the process of returning a behaviour
to its original or pre-reinforcement level. It also connotes the gradual
elimination of a new response through rewards of the reinforcers.
4) Shaping: This involves initiating planned changes in another’s
behaviour and actually keeping track of the progress and positively
reinforcing those behaviours that begin to appropriate the desired end
product more and more.
5) Modelling: This refers to the process whereby elaborate sequences or
complex sets of behaviours are initiated. It involves a situation where
people who do not know how to act have to rely on others around
them, imitating their behaviours. 6) Response Cost Technique: This involves making an individual to
loose or forfeit something that is of value to him/her as a result of a
negative/unwanted behaviour.
7) The Time our Technique: This involves the removal of offender from
a reinforcing environment and situation to a non reinforcing
environment and situation where he is to stay alone for a while to pay
for his behaviour.
8) Systematic Desensitization Technique: This involves helping people
who manifest fear in the presence of certain objects or persons and
incidences.
These techniques can also be applied to other specialized populations.
Drug Abused
The youths are the most vulnerable group of drug abuse; therefore
there is need for an understanding of why many youths have the need to
abuse drugs, which would go along way in counselling them. The following
were identified by Yakubu (2000) as the possible causes of drug abuse:
(1) The drive towards modernization
(2) Excessive use of drugs made or induced young ones to experiment as
well.
(3) Seeking of pleasure
(4) To help cope with personal problems and psychological stress.
(5) Young ones trying to protest against norms imposed on them by the
society.
(6) Increase in international contacts as to imitate life styles
(7) Social factors such as peer influence.
(8) Poor self-image and frequent experience feelings of lack of selfesteem. (9) Marital disharmony, family stress and the break up of families are
important factors.
(10) The desire to achieve in a competitive world like the case of Diego
Maradona in USA 1994.
(11) Ignorance
(12) Mass media.
It can be noted from the above that, there is no single causes of drug
abuse. It is however generally agreed that certain reasons for abuse are
important, such as availability of drugs, a vulnerable personality and social
pressure.
According to Abayemi (1990) many drug users, particularly
adolescents taking non-prescribed drugs appear to have personality disorder
before taking drugs as shown by poor school record, truancy, delinquency
and dropout. Such drug-abusers often seems to be without resources to cope
with the challenges of day-today life, They are inconsistent in their feelings
and critical of society and authority; some drug abusers give a history of
mental illness or personality disorder in the family, or they come from
severely disorganized background. Abayemi (1990) opined that a history of
childhood unhappiness is common among drug abusers.
Drug abusers are prone to many social and psychological problems,
for according to Oladele (2007) in many cases, individuals not only break
the law by obtaining their drugs, but engage in illegal activities to obtain
money needed to buy the drugs. He can also create illegal network of
channels for drug distribution and sale. The individual dependent on drug
often makes the acquisition of drugs a way of life, living little time for work
or school.
Drug abuse poses the greatest threat to the health and survival of
mankind.
For instance, alcohol can cause liver disease, like cirrhosis,
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hepatitis and cancer. Many drug abusers die of HIV/AIDS. Many of the
HIV – positive population are drug users who injected themselves with
infected needles. Many babies born are exposed to illicit drug while in the
womb. Such children suffer damaging effects both mentally and physically
and painful withdrawal symptoms.
Drugs have destroyed several homes. Parents who crave for drugs
rarely provide for their children with a stable and loving home. Children
who grow in environment where drugs users live take to the streets as “area
boys” or street urchins or even get involved in drug themselves.
Often people involved in drugs are responsible for crimes such as
mugging, armed robbery, murder, drug trafficking, and increased risk of
homicide and prostitution.
The counselling strategies that can be employed for drug abused
individuals or groups should include the following:
(a) confrontation
(b) accurate education
(c) assertiveness training
(d) decision making strategies
(e) Peer cluster involvement (Adegoke, 2003:72).
Handicapped/physically challenged
The handicapped/physically challenged according to Carew (2009)
consist of physical, social, psychological, mental and economic individuals
who deviate from the normal population. The term challenged have been
interchangeably used with disadvantaged or handicapped for whom special
education should be provided. Some times the term “exceptional”
individuals, is used for special education and in that case the gifted and
talented consist of this categorization. The challenged group of individuals (especially in the school system) are those that would need special education
because their abilities, emotionality, mental, behavioural and social
characteristics are different from the normal population (Mba 1991).
The
categories into which individuals that are handicapped or physically
challenged include:
(1) the hearing disabled,
(2) the mentally retarded
(3) The physical and health impaired.
(4) The speech and hearing – impaired
(5) The visually – impaired
(6) Children with behaviour disorders (disturbed hearing behaviour)
(7) The gifted and talented,
Individuals with one kind of disability or the other needs special kind
of attention in order to fit into normal life with the generality of the
population in terms of adjustment and information.
In line with this Nwoye
(1998), asserted that, the counsellor should however remember that they
need the adjustment and informational services at two basic levels: namely
those to be given to them directly and those to be given to them indirectly
through their parents, the peers, their teachers and their potential employers.
In counselling the physically challenged directly, the first thing to do
for them is to help them adjust their minds and feelings to the meaning and
implications of their challenged conditions.
To help them in this regard the
counsellor needs to apply much of his professional counselling skills such as
that of empathy, rapport building, and adequate cross-checking of feelings,
effective communication and unconditional positive regard.
To be able to use these skills in counselling the physically challenged,
the counsellor needs first of all to get his cognitive field sufficiently
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broadened concerning the nature and implications of the different categories
of challenging conditions. And this implies that he needs to read a lot
concerning the needs and problems of the various challenging conditions so
as to be able to gather enough relevant information that might help him to be
able to correct in good time any prior misconceptions he may be entertaining
concerning the various individuals challenged by one specific disability or
the other.
Helping a physically challenged client to adjust to his condition
requires giving him counselling on how to plan an effective strategy for
improving his other positive aspects of self and then helping him to
determine how to manage most of his existing challenging conditions so as
to help him control as much as possible, the obstacles they can present to his
progress in life.
The informational strategy that could be employed for the physically
challenged is on the issue of how to help clients to understand the true nature
and implication of his particular challenging situation. And then, to go
ahead from there, to help him identify the known strategies for handling the
disability.
Information that is most relevant in this regard, is that concerned with
the issue of where to obtain adequate diagnosis for his specific type of
handicap, and then an assessment of the extent of his chances of gaining
effective education in spite of all his conditions, and subsequently the
opportunities he will have for entering into some gainful employment after
receiving relevant training.
To counsel them on how to obtain effective
remediation for their peculiar handicap the counsellor needs to make
adequate effort to acquaint himself with relevant information concerning the
agencies and appropriate health organizations that are known to possess the
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specialist personnel and resources for arresting further complication of the
particular disabilities troubling his target client.
The physically challenged client indeed can also be helped to be
relevant of much of his anxieties if he is helped to identify and relate with all
relevant philanthropic organizations both local and international, which can
come to his aid, in his effort to negotiate effectively for assistances from
such organizations.
The Retirees
The beginning of retirement marks a new phase in people lives.
When one crosses the boundary between employment and retirement,
questions of meaning will inevitably arise, if they have not been
acknowledged. Even if there has been some thought about those questions,
taking retirement provides an actual live experience rather anticipated
experience. How do we find meaning in retirement? What will one do with
the rest of his/her life? How can one build structure in his life to take the
place of work? To be engaged in a worthy struggle might be essential to
people’s survival. How can one make his/her life a worthwhile contribution
to humanity? These are just some of the types of questions that are relevant
to the retire (Tambawal 2008). These questions and similar ones make the
retirees special population because they are saddled with the situation of
disengaging from the bubbles of life, to retirement and its attendant
problems.
Tambawal (2008) asserted that professional literature have identified
certain psycho social effects of retirement on retirees which calls for
counselling such as disbelief or denial which according to Christy & Anyim
(2005), is the situation in which one is in a fantasy. He is not sure whether
he is dreaming or smoothing real is happening. Another problem as
14
identified by Akinade (2003) is anger where a retiree may be annoyed either
with self, the employer; anyone in his family he suspects has contributed to
his fate. Anxiety disorder, depression and substance abuse are also
identified by Christy and Anyim (2005) as being part of the problems
encountered by retirees.
The identified problems call for a concerted effort from the
counselling world to help retirees adjust to normal life. In counselling
retiree therefore, Egong, Akepami and Usani (2005) suggested a normal
programme for counselling, where they indicated that: to assist the retiree to
adapt to another style of life on retirement, duration of which should be six
months.
The specific objectives of the training programme are as follows:
(1) participate in pre-retirement orientation programme,
(2) attend seminars and workshops on skills acquisition for alternative
job,
(3) learn how to make use of pension benefits,
(4) Acquire interpersonal skills for new life.
For counsellors to do this effectively Nwoye (1990), identified the
following steps to be taken:
(a) identification of the problem for which counselling remediation is
sought;
(b) Definition, in behavioural terms of the specific goal to be achieved in
the face of the problem is in need of resolution.
(c) Behavioural assessment and determination of the baseline data
regarding the occurrence and intensity of the problem under attention;
(d) Determination and selection of the treatment strategies to be applied
for the achievement of the goal that has been specified. (e) Evaluation of the counselling outcome vis-avis the goal but in
advance of treatment strategies applied.
Okpede (1998) identified the following as the counselling needs of retirees
which should be the focus:
(a) Vocational counselling
(b) Readjustment counselling
(c) Dietary counselling
(d) Grooming counselling
Retirement as a programme that inflicts psychological, social,
economic and mental disadvantages on the victims can be seen to require
specialized attention, and this is from no other source than counselling, a
need to be properly groomed to welcome and cope successfully with it when
it comes.
RECOMMENDATION
1. The counsellor based training curriculum in our Universities and
Colleges of Education should be broadened and enlarged, so that
trainees would come to terms with the specific needs of counseling
clients with special problem during practical attachments.
2. Specialized training be given to individual counsellors instead of been
generalist, the would be counsellor should trained in such a way he
can conveniently and professionally handle issues relating to his
specialization, like in medicine and law where people specialize in
particular areas.
3. An increased public awareness on the role of counsellors in our midst
should be undertaken by both print and electronic media.
4. The practicum for trainee counsellors should be conducted not only
within the school setting but also within specialized areas and population, so that trainees will come to face the life situations of
clients.
5. A collaborative working relationship be formal between counsellors
and others in the helping relationship, by sociologist, psychologist,
psychiatrists, etc. so that ideas can be shared and meaningful
assistance could be given to clients.
Conclusion
Counselling as a profession that is gaining acceptance in our school
and non-school setting due to its approach in resolving human problems.
Specific planning and approaches need to be in place for counselling special
populations. Therefore, there is need for more expanded and specialized
training of the would be counsellors and the Counselling Association of
Nigeria (CASSON) needs to brace up to face the enormous challenges of
counselling special populations.
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