engleski

ANALYSIS OF COUNSELLING PROCESSES DURING MANDATORY PSYCHOSOCIAL COUNSELLING

Mandatory psychosocial counselling is one of the measures imposed by the Croatian lawmakers for juvenile offenders (between 14 and 21 years of age) after committing an offence. In that manner, juvenile offenders are usually involuntary clients of mandatory psychosocial counselling. The research with juvenile offenders in counselling centres was conducted with the purpose of evaluating counselling processes with involuntary clients. Twenty-three juveniles convicted of an offense and mandated to psychosocial counselling were included in this research. Counsellors assessed every session with the focus on content, perceived establishment of therapeutic relationship and perceived intra-psychological processes of minors/clients from counsellor perspective. The goal of this paper is to establish the processes of change in the observed aspects of established therapeutic relationship, content of work and intra-psychological processes of minors. In order to determine these changes, pairwise comparisons between third, sixth and ninth session were made (using general linear model). Clients' insight into personal processes increases significantly as process of counselling progresses. The counsellors’ perception of therapeutic relationship is also more positive as the counselling is in progress. More specifically, results show that during the counselling process the client’s openness to establish a relationship with the counsellor and openness toward problem solving increases. Considering factors which define perceived working alliance, there are statistically significant differences in relation to task and bond, but not in relation to goal. Results show that perception of bond establishment and task achievement increases as the counselling process progresses. Considering the content of the counselling, themes such as development of self-management skills, improvement of personal relationships, remodification of antisocial beliefs or prevention of antisocial behaviour are present during the whole counselling process while themes related to establishment of relationship and goals of counselling are more common for the beginning of counselling process. Analysing obtained results, specificities at the beginning of counselling process were determined, which are primarily related to establishment of relationship and goals of counselling and establishment of relationship. Implications for the beginning of mandatory psychosocial counselling or counselling involuntary clients (juvenile offenders) will be discussed during this presentation.

mandatory psychosocial counselling, juveniles, counselling process, working alliance

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