The NECA Workshop in New Orleans provided a variety of information and skill building topics for the participants. Cynthia Jackson did a great job as workshop coordinator. The presidents also provided input, Bill Fenson, President, and Kay Brawley, President-elect.
On the first day, following introductions, Cheri Butler reviewed some key points in Dealing with Difficult People and Linda Ley-Siemer led a presentation on a successful Seminole (Florida) Community College Welfare-to-Work Program. In the afternoon, Andrea Hall talked about successful approaches to serving the ex-offender, and Dr. Lacy Hall led an experiential session focused on the participants completing, scoring and profiling their Hall Occupational Orientation Inventory results.
Perhaps the highlight of the second day of the workshop was the Solution Focused Career Counseling presentation by Wendy Stubbs of the University of South Dakota, a counselor at the Career Development Center. The thrust of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) as applied to career and employment counseling, is to build solutions with the client, not resorting to a “whine and complain” mentality. SFBT beliefs include: 1) solution building as opposed to problem-solving approach, 2) helps clients to discover their strengths and empowers them, 3) allows the client to be the expert on his or her life, 4) does not ask why, 5) the empowering process allows the client to discover untapped resources, 6) does not place blame, and 7) recognizes that the client has been a survivor, often under difficult circumstances. The paradigm shift for counselors using the SFBT model is that they are not the “expert” solving clients’ problems.
The counselor using the SFBT approach asks some key questions including scaling questions and the Miracle Question. Useful questions include: How can I be useful? Or, how can I help? What have you tried? What do you want to have different? What have you found helpful so far? (an indicator of coping) The basic form of the scaling question is: “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 means you are coping with your situation as well as you can imagine anyone could, and 0 means you are not coping well at all, how would you say you are coping right now?” This scaling question can be used for a variety of situations such as: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how prepared are you to conduct a job interview?” Or, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how important is it for you to have that GED?”
The Miracle Question asks the client to focus on the future and how he or she can plan for it to happen. Develop as much detail as possible when they are responding to this question. Miracle Questions to ask might take this form: “If you were to wake up tomorrow and all your problems would be solved, how would that make you feel? What would you be doing different in your life?”
Related to the Miracle Question is the one about a class reunion. Here is the scenario:
I suspect many career and employment counselors are already using some of these solution-focused brief techniques in various forms. For more information about brief therapy techniques, visit the website: www.brief-therapy.org. The presenter, Wendy Stubbs, would be happy to respond to questions you might have and you can reach her at: wendy@careercounseling.com.
Success! If you missed it, the New Orleans Workshop was a unanimous success as declared by all who participated. We ended with a contest for Most Unusual Occupation in New Orleans, Most Unusual (or radical name for) Hot Sauce, and Funniest Saying/Expression in New Orleans. Most entries are not printable but one could say that we have a very cleaver and resourceful group. Overall winners were Andrea Hall and Wendy Stubbs with prizes to be awarded at the Anaheim, CA workshop next March. As the outgoing president, I wanted to inform you of the tremendous pride I have felt, in part from all the thanks I’ve received, and even from some of the thankless tasks as president.
Membership is still of primary concern. You are our most important asset. I have made attempts to reach out to many of you. I have had the opportunity to meet some of you over the past year and to learn about your experiences and expertise. This position requires full attention and coordination, which I have further learned can only be stretched so far. I was able to count on the leadership of this organization to pull together and make sure what needed to get done was done. One general item of which I have become aware over the past year is that even with our advanced technology, we still have our communication issues. Please keep ACA up to date with your address changes, phone number and other contact information.
We have reached near critical stages over the past year with membership renewals. NECA is interested in hearing from you about how to improve what we already offer, and to identify what else we should offer in order to assure your continuous support. This is a great organization! NECA is more than just friends and family getting together. We have a unique synergy that allows us to continue to be the best that we can be with the goal of offering the best service that we can to the client. Our reliance on each other is strong and we need to kindle that flame to our newest members. The whole is stronger than the sum of the parts. Be a part of it and get involved. I must also add here that we seem very healthy with the number of persons stepping up to take on leadership positions. We need others to do the same in offering support to these leaders.
I have started an informational newsgroup on Yahoo Groups that you can log onto and see pictures from the workshop. You can also add your wisdom that can be shared with the whole group. This is a “listserve” and the items you post get mailed to the group. Members and non-members can join. It is not a moderated group but it does require initial permission to join the group. To get started go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NECA_information/.
Finally, I wish to thank everyone for this opportunity to serve you in this capacity. The sharing and learning that took place is immeasurable and worthy of heartfelt thanks.
As promised in our last issue, I am happy to announce a full program of NECA-sponsored workshops for instructors to teach the new Working Ahead curriculum. This is the curriculum that satisfies the training requirement for the Global Career Development Facilitator Credential and addresses the skill development needs of staff working in the One-Stop Systems. Graduates of these workshops will be able to conduct courses for those seeking to qualify as Global Career Development Facilitators.
The Global Career Development Facilitator (GCDF) works in an organization that provides career services to customers. The training is designed to enhance the skills needed to help customers make informed career and job decisions, develop a career plan of action and conduct a successful job search. The required GCDF credential competencies are approved by the Center for Credentialing and Education, an affiliate of the National Board for Certified Counselors. The competencies include: Helping Skills, Diversity, Technology, Labor Market Information, Assessment, Career Development Models, Employability Skills, Training Peers and Clients, Promotion and Public Relations, Program Management Implementation, and Scope of Practice-Ethics-Consultation.
The uniqueness of the Working Ahead curriculum developed by Rutgers University’s Heldrich Workforce Center lies with the thirteenth competency, which includes learning activities designed to address the needs of those working in the Workforce Development System – specifically One-Stop Career Centers. The scope of this portion of the curriculum includes:
Organizations with One-Stop system workers who would benefit from the training include One-Stop Career Centers, Educational Institutions at all levels, Youth Agencies, Job Corps, Vocational Rehabilitation, Social/Human Services, Youth Agencies, Job Corps, Corrections, Community and Faith-based Organizations, and Housing Authorities. In today’s job market, the private business sector human resource and job development centers are also prime candidates to benefit from this training.
More than ninety Instructors are currently trained to teach Working Ahead curriculum. The list of instructors is on the Heldrich Center Web Site at http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/linkpage.htm. The Instructor training is offered as a non-credit course or as a graduate course. NECA will be offering CEUs as part of the course offering. The training sponsored by NECA includes:
Registration cost varies as to type of credit and location of hosting institution. Contact me at kbrawley@mindspring.com for costs, applications and further details.
The following is a report of the highlights of the Spring ACA Governing Council meeting held in New Orleans on March 21-22, 2002.
Michele Carpentier was approved as Parliamentarian and Carolyn Thomas as Treasurer-Elect for the 2002-2003 Association year.
Please note the following motion. It may effect our status this June. (At the end of April NECA dual memberships were at 528 and if they are below 500 at the end of June, we will lose our Divisional status.)
The Governing Council approved the changes to Policy 701.1 as submitted by the Bylaws Committee. By this action, Policy 701.1 now reads as follows:
There was a motion to amend the Bylaws by adding a new section to read: h) All members of ACA shall be members of at least one of the national divisions or organizational affiliates. This motion was defeated).
Membership is an issue that the Governing Council is very concerned about. Action was taken to reconstitute the Task Force on Division and Organizational Affiliate Membership to review and evaluate the steps already taken to enhance Division and Organizational Affiliate membership. The Task Force was charged with the responsibility to make additional recommendations for increasing Division and Organizational Affiliate memberships.
We adopted the FY 2003 Proposed Budget reflecting $8,626,911 in revenues, $8,601,029 in expenses, and $25,882 as projected revenues over expenses.
The Governing Council approved the following Strategic Planning Timeline:
Linda Osborne, representing the Regions was selected to serve on the ACA Executive Committee for FY 2003 and I was selected to represent the Divisions. The representatives selected to serve on the ACA Nominations and Elections Committee for FY 2003 were Marie Wakefield for the Regions and Robert Bakko for the Divisions.
The Governing Council reviewed potential Convention sites and approved the following cities for 2004 through 2006:
There was some discussion concerning the selection of Montreal as this would be the first time an ACA conference would be held outside of the United States. It was decided that negotiations move forward on the Montreal convention as it is a location that is easy for many of our members from the NE Region to get to and is not as costly as most other Eastern locations.
The motion submitted by the Nominations and Elections Committee that the election of ACA president be based on plurality of votes rather than the Hare System was defeated. The Hare System will be continued.
Under new business, the Governing Council requested that ACA provide information about and links to material that counselors can use to help children cope with the consequences of oppression and internalized oppression including but not limited to culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, disability, and socio-economic status.
In addition, we passed a motion to create a Task Force to assist in branch development, in building, revitalizing, and assisting ACA branches. This Task Force will include an ACA membership staff person. A report will be given on this undertaking to the Governing Council in fall 2002 defining specific steps and timelines of things done or to be accomplished to include but not be limited to scanning of past branch members.
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