Challenges and Problems of Guidance and Counselling
Back to: Childhood and Growing Up – Unit 3,4
Guidance and Counselling
According to Jones,
“To guide means to indicate, to point out, to show the way. It means more than to assist.”
Guidance and counselling is the process of helping individuals realize their potentials and develop them into skills. It is also a way of helping individuals understand their problems and deal with them effectively. According to Harriman,
“Counselling is the psychotherapeutic relationship in which an individual receives direct help from an adviser or finds an opportunity to release negative feelings and thus clear the way for positive growth in personality.”
Needs and Problems of Adolescence their Guidance and Counselling
The challenges and problems of guidance and counselling are as follows:
Lack of cooperation
While guidance and counselling is certainly an effective way of providing assistance to someone who needs it, not everyone may be willing to accept the advice given to them. Many individuals may not cooperate with the advice given to them which can cause an obstruction in the way of guidance.
Inadequate Facilities
To ensure the proper functioning and efficiency of guidance and counselling services, proper facilities are needed. Facilities such as a guidance and counselling room, proper furniture, bookshelves, and the like are necessary.
Lack or Absence of Funding
Guidance and counselling take place in an atmosphere surrounded by motivation and positivity. However, this is not possible if there are no adequate facilities. To ensure the adequacy of facilities, funding is needed and many educational institutions suffer a lack of funding when it comes to guidance and counselling.
Shortage of Professionals
Guidance and counselling are terms that are often used interchangeably. However, they do have a slight difference. While guidance can be given by anyone, counselling can only be given by an expert in the field. Hence, finding a professional counsellor can be difficult.
Lack of Support
Although there is a rise in the awareness of the need for guidance and counselling in the educational sphere, there is still an air of neglect that hangs when it comes to the implementation of these services.
Lack of Time
Along with the lack of funding and sufficient resources, there is also a shortage of time. School timetables cannot seem to fit in some space for guidance and counselling.
Neglect from Parents
For the implementation of guidance and counselling to be successful, there needs to support from everyone including the school, teachers, parents, and the learners themselves. However, many parents may not give guidance and counselling enough consideration and importance to it thereby causing an obstruction in the implementation of these services.
Conclusion
Although the awareness about the need and importance of guidance and counselling is constantly increasing, there continue to be many obstacles that impact these services from functioning effectively.
