Community Counseling: Contemporary Theory and Practice

This authoritative volume offers practitioners and counselors in training, who are employed in a variety of settings, a comprehensive overview of topics called for by the national accreditation standards for community counselor education. Of benefit to all counselors is that much of the book's content can be applied not only to client populations representing age groups from late adolescence to the elderly, but also to members of different minority groups. The following premises serve as a guide in addressing the current challenges faced by counselors in delivering the needed services to all clients:

Healthy human development, not psychopathology, provides the scientific basis for counseling; the counseling process aims to assist the client to identify, develop, and use personal and environmental resources to achieve stated goals; it does not aim to diagnose and treat psychopathology; the desired outcome of counseling is to have developed the ability to choose, to cope, and to grow, not to be cured. Key conceptual models, case examples, and discussion questions aid readers in the exploration, understanding, and actualization of theory and practice.

Titles of related interest also available from Waveland Press: Bibb, Rose's Story, Revised Edition (ISBN 9781577666622); Caplan-Caplan, Mental Health Consultation and Collaboration (ISBN 9781577660736); and Crimando-Riggar, Community Resources: A Guide for Human Service Workers, Second Edition (ISBN 9781577663775).

This book is an introduction to the emerging field known as community counseling and is, accordingly, intended to provide an integrated, coherent description of the field. Because of the growth of community counseling training programs, the field has reached a point where the domain of knowledge warrants a comprehensive book that focuses on the principles and practice of community counseling.