Figure 5: Illustration for Reporting and Referral

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1. Discuss the importance of counselling children, adolescents and young people who are at risk or survivors of SRGBV.

2. Explain qualities of a good counsellor for children, adolescents, and young people. 3. Outline good counselling techniques.

METHODS USED:

• Brainstorming. • Role plays. • Group discussion. • Buzz Groups.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

• Flipcharts or chalkboard. • Masking tape. • Markers or chalk. • Sticky notes or • Manila pieces (15 by 10 centimetres). • Slides • Applications e.g. Zoom (virtual training) • Manila (15 by 15 centimeters) cards or sticky notes.

PREPARATION NOTE FOR THE FACILITATOR:

• Review the reflection questions in this session. • Arrange all the materials that will be required for this session to be successful (Flipchart slides or online notes on definition of counselling, importance of counselling, qualities of a good counsellor and good counselling techniques). • Familiarize yourself with this session and be ready to answer questions asked by participants.

SUPPORT NOTES FOR THE FACILITATOR:

Definition of counselling

Counselling is face-to-face communication between a counsellor (teacher) and one or more people where the counsellor helps the individual or group of people to make informed decisions, choices, and act on them. Through the counselling process children, adolescents, and young people at risk of or survivors of SRGBV can overcome their problems. Counselling empowers them and their parents to deal with fear, shock, and anger, among others. Learner counselling is a planned intervention between a child, adolescent, young person and/ or parent with the counsellor to assist them improve, or resolve his/her present behaviour, difficulty, or discomforts.

Importance of counselling Counselling helps learners and parents to:

• Discuss feelings and worries freely without cultural, gender, and social discrimination. • Express worries, emotions, releases tension as well as share feelings and behaviours. • Deal with painful emotions and challenges. • Make choices and decisions that will prolong the learner’s life and improve their quality of life. • Minimize negative consequences and adapt to the external environment (e.g., home, school, family). • The counsellor is well trained to address the fears of both the parent/and of the child adolescent or young person. • Relieves anxiety. • Increased knowledge of care and support for survivor of SRGBV.

• Raises awareness and alertness concerning his/her responsibility of avoiding and preventing SRGBV.

Qualities of a good counsellor and factors that facilitate effective counselling a) Being non-judgemental:

The counsellor should use non-judgmental language and posture.

Leaning forward communicates involvement and interest in what the client is saying.

Leaning back usually communicates a judgmental attitude and lack of interest in what the client is communicating. Make sure your posture does not intimidate the client.

Counsellors should not use words that apportion blame to the child, adolescent, or young person.

Fidgeting or restlessness by counsellor gives the child, adolescent or young person and parent an impression that the counsellor has no time to listen or that it is his/her problem that has caused you to be unsettled. Fidgeting around in one’s chair, reaching out for a book, holding newspapers or writing may communicate to the client that the counsellor is impatient and would like to move on to something else. Such behaviour interrupts the client’s communication.

b) Being empathetic:

This is the act of seeing things from a client’s perspective or point of view. It implies trying to see and feel how it is for the client who is in that situation. This requires the counsellor to understand, appreciate and validate the client’s feelings. It also demands that a counsellor pays careful attention to what the client is saying to understand how things are for the client. This must be communicated to the client. c) Showing care, concern, and willingness to help:

Nearly all counsellors have a busy client schedule and load and might fail to create time to be available to help and support children, adolescents or young persons who are at risk or survivors of SRGBV.

Nevertheless, a counsellor must be available, approachable, and committed to receive and attend to these children, adolescents, or young persons.

The counsellor should give the child, adolescent, or young person and/or parent time to express their emotions.

d) Being friendly:

This refers to the mutual friendship, care, and concern to the client/learner. The counsellor must approach the client/learner as a unique person with a unique problem. There must be willingness on the part of the counsellor to help the client/ learner.

The counsellor must be warm and open towards the client/ learner and must be non-defensive. They should use age-appropriate language understood by the child, adolescent, or young person. e) Openness:

The counsellor must be true to oneself and to the client/ learner, i.e., honest, and not to make empty promises. They should provide sufficient information to the child, adolescent, or young person and parent but must avoid information overload.

f) Respectful/Non- discrimination: Respect clients/ learners for who they are regardless of their sex, age, background, social-economic status, etc. and this can be expressed through verbal and non-verbal communication.

g) Privacy and confidentiality:

The counsellor should be a person who is able to keep secrets. Any person who finds it hard to keep information concerning his/her client’s problems cannot make a good counsellor. For counselling to be fruitful and meaningful, the learner should feel safe to talk about issues that he/she might not have discussed elsewhere. The counsellor should ensure confidentiality to learner and parent. In cases where total confidentiality is not possible; for example, if the issue at hand must proceed to the police or courts of law, the counsellor should inform the learner and the parent. Interviews and examinations should be conducted in a place where the child, adolescent, young person who is at risk or a survivor of SRGBV will not be observed or disturbed by other people.

Other important attributes of a good child counsellor

• Get down to the child’s eye level. • Ability to speak softly, smile. • Identify and respect emotions (i.e., crying/anger is

OK). • Give the child, adolescent, or young person choices. • Talk about things that interest the child. • Maintain eye contact.

GOOD COUNSELLING TECHNIQUES COUNSELLING TECHNIQUES

Common techniques used in counselling children, adolescents, or young people include.

a) Listening: Every child, adolescent or young person has a story to tell and the way you respond depends on how you actively listen to them. Listening involves attending carefully to both verbal and non-verbal messages/language and involves suspending judgment. b) Enactment: One way of making a learner counselling session different from merely a talking session is to ask the child, adolescent, or young person to act or show what happens when the problem arises. Children, adolescent, or young person can be asked to act out both the problem and the solutions. Observe the communication process and interaction and identify where the problem lies. This technique gives the counsellor considerable information and helps to formulate interventions and strategies. c) Empty Chair: This is used to symbolically bring in absent members of the family or significant others into the counselling session. The counsellor might say to the child, adolescent or young person “If your mother were sitting in this chair, how would you inform her that you have been exposed to sexual violence. How would she respond?”The technique helps the child, adolescent, or young person to develop effective communication skills and pass on sensitive and worrying information. Vacation/Side-stepping: Some children, adolescent or young persons feel intimidated by the presence of others, so they fail to open-up during the counselling session. It might be beneficial to negotiate and see them separately, to create space for the child, adolescent, or young person to openup. During the separation, it is important to agree about confidentiality issues and information to be shared in the presence of others. d) Use of silence: A child, adolescent or young person’s counsellor needs to learn the use of silence. Silence creates room for children, adolescents, or young persons to speak and share more. When a question is posed to the child, adolescent, or young person; he/she may not respond immediately, hence the temptation to try and simplify the question further or ask another. The fact that the child, adolescent, or young person does not answer quickly does not mean the question is too difficult. She/he might just be processing the answer and asking a new one might disrupt their thought process. Allow them some space and if the silence is prolonged, comment on the process then seek clarification e.g. “Do you want me to rephrase the question?” e) Widening the system: When people are in crisis, they usually forget the other people who can be there for them. Widening the system is looking for support from any given social system surrounding a person. This usually starts with the immediate family then, if necessary, move out to the extended family and then to all other systems. f) Externalizing: When children, adolescents or young persons have a problem/ bad behaviour, people tend to associate the problem or the bad behaviour with them so firmly that the child, adolescent, or young person is seen as the problem, e.g., a child involved in bed wetting being called a bed wetter, a child who has learnt smoking and drinking alcohol being referred to as a bad person.

Externalizing is therefore a way of separating the problem or behaviour from the child, adolescent, or young person. g) Taking one down: This is a way of acknowledging the client’s expertise in certain areas, for example, after talking to a child, adolescent, or young person for about 30 minutes a counsellor cannot become an expert on the family or culture. Therefore, a good counsellor will take one down and say something like

“How are such problems normally solved in your family or in your culture”? This educates and teaches the counsellor about the client’s way of life.

ACTIVITY 1: DEFINITION OF COUNSELLING (20 MINUTES)

1) Ask participants to individually write on cards, sticky notes or in-meeting chat the definition of

“Counselling”. 2) Ask participants to post the written cards or sticky notes on the wall. For virtual training, share screen with all definitions. 3) Request participants to go ahead and read the definitions. 4) Process the various definitions provided. 5) Summarize discussion with flipcharts, slides, or online notes on “Definition of counselling”.

ACTIVITY 2: IMPORTANCE OF COUNSELLING LEARNERS (20 MINUTES)

1) Request participants to pair up or pair them up in online breakout rooms and ask them to discuss the importance of counselling learners. 2) Ask a few pairs to share their answers with the whole group. 3) Record and process responses. 4) Summarize discussion with flipcharts, slides, or online notes on “Importance of counselling”

ACTIVITY 3: QUALITIES OF A GOOD COUNSELLOR AND FACTORS THAT FACILITATE EFFECTIVE COUNSELLING (40 MINUTES)

1) Ask participants to brainstorm on factors that facilitate effective learner counselling. 2) Write responses on flipchart, slides or online white board and process them. 3) Summarize with notes on “Factors that facilitate effective counseling in learners” 1) Ask participants to individually write the characteristics of an effective child, adolescent, or young person counsellor in terms of knowledge, attitudes and skills.

2) Ask participants to volunteer to share on the qualities they have written. 3) Process the responses. 4) Summarize discussion with notes on “Qualities of a good counselor”.

ACTIVITY 4: GOOD COUNSELLING TECHNIQUES (40 MINUTES)

1) Display notes on counselling techniques. 2) Discuss the counselling techniques with participants. 3) Divide the participants into 3 small groups or online breakout rooms. 4) Ask each group to select volunteers to role plays as: • A counsellor. • A child, adolescent, or young person. • A parent. The rest of the group member become observers. 1) Ask each group to come up with a case scenario and conduct a role play using a combination of counseling techniques.

2) Ask the observers for comments on usage of the techniques by counsellor during the role play. 3) Request all groups to report back in plenary and observers to give feedback. 4) Process the feedback. 5) Summarize session by emphasizing the importance of the child counselling techniques earlier discussed

WRAP UP: Close the unit by telling the participants that counselling involves three major parties: the learner in danger who is in danger of or a survivor of SRGBV, parent and other primary care giver.

Counselling children, adolescents or young persons who have experienced SRGBV must be adapted to the developmental level and capacities of the individual child, adolescent, or young person. Ask the group to note three ways they can use or apply what they have just learned and circle the one they plan to do first. PERSONAL REFLECTION: Remember, displaced students tend to be particularly at risk and poverty can also make students vulnerable to stress, trauma and their negative mental health effects, which can lead to behavioural difficulties (Blitz et al., 2016).

PSS is essential for such learners but also helps to strengthen SRGBV survivors and their parents in dealing with the challenges they face and ensures their active participation in coping with the difficulties.