Practicum Placement in a Counseling‐Employment Agency for Disadvantaged Youth

Abstract

In order to emphasize the development of skills in helping the culturally disadvantaged, graduate students were given practicum placement in a Department of Labor‐financed agency which gave counseling and employment training to disadvantaged youth. Students attended staff meetings, interviewed staff members concerning the work they performed, and discussed client contacts with caseworkers, in addition to interviewing agency clients. Increased awareness of problems, broadened conceptualizations, and expansion of interpersonal skills were seen as advantages of the practicum. Limitations included some lack of goal clarity and inefficiency of time use in dealing with this clientele.

Restructuring the On‐Campus Counselor Education Laboratory: Contemporary Professional Issues

“…1961;Poling, 1968;Ryan, 1969;Smith, 1984). Such pragmatic concerns resulted in practicum placements in agencies (Payne & Mills, 1970), the use of in-class simulations (Gysbers & Moore, 1970), and cooperative arrangements with schools in which practicum students counseled children in the school (Gladstein, 1970).…”

Counselor Education Applied to Industry

“…This probably reflects two phenomena: (a) an increasing acceptance by educators of counselors with backgrounds other than education; and, (b) an increasing production of counselors for positions in colleges and universities, rehabilitation and employment counseling, and other agency work by counselor education programs that have traditionally trained counselors only for elementary and secondary school positions. (p. 177) Recent literature has also indicated a movement of counselor education into the preparation of support personnel (Haase & DiMattia 1970), employment agency settings (Payne & Mills 1970), and the secular domain (Eberdt 1970), among others. In view of the increasing variety of noneducational placements of persons trained in counselor preparation programs, counselor education seems to be making a rather unique contribution to human service needs in a variety of settings.…”