Background: Levels of goal agreement between therapists and adult clients have been shown to relate to therapeutic outcomes. Understanding clients' goals for therapy, therefore, is an important area of study. Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic goals that young people have in school-based counselling, and the extent to which different types of goals are achieved. Method: The study is a post-hoc analysis of data collected from two pilot randomised controlled trials (RCT) using the Goal Based Outcome (GBO) tool, in which 73 participants were allocated to either a counselling group or a waitlist control group. Thematic analysis was used to identify the main types of goals young people had; with descriptive quantitative analysis to identify the prevalence of these goals, and multi-level analysis to identify whether some goals were attained to a greater extent than others. Results: The most frequent type of goals identified by young people related to increasing self-confidence and self-acceptance, followed by controlling or reducing anger, improving relationships with family, and increasing feelings of happiness. No significant relationship was found between the type of goal and the extent to which they were attained in counselling. Conclusion: Young people in counselling are particularly concerned with improving their self-confidence, and this suggests a somewhat different focus to the counselling work than that which emerges from counsellors' reports of presenting and predominant issues. This suggests that school-based counsellors should be mindful of clients' particular therapeutic goals

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Content & FocusThe aim of this theoretical paper is to bring to the fore current discussions and issues regarding social justice in counselling psychology practice and training. Although counselling psychologists are required by law to engage in anti-discriminatory practice, this seldom changes the reality of marginalised and oppressed client groups outside the therapy room – they continue to face oppression and discrimination in their daily lives. The paper discusses relevant literature on social justice and social advocacy in counselling psychology with a special focus on counselling psychology training in the US geared towards incorporating social advocacy, including the scientist-practitioner-advocate model.ConclusionsThe paper highlights that the debate on social justice and social advocacy, whilst considerably advanced in the US, has not spread with equal fervour across the Atlantic to the UK. It proposes that if counselling psychologists in the UK are to be committed to working with diverse populations, and to anti-discriminatory practice, then this discussion is a crucial one to be engaged with, starting as early as during doctoral training.