The helping process
Helpers see clients in a wide variety of contexts and with many different primary and secondary agendas. Furthermore, their contact with clients may be brief and intermittent rather than on a regular basis. To assume that there is a single helping process that covers all these situations is inaccurate. Nevertheless, many helpers, helper trainers and helping students find it useful to think of their use of counselling skills with clients as constituting a helping process.
When thinking of counselling and helping, the word 'process' has at least two main meanings. One meaning is that of movement, the fact of something happening. Such processes can take place within helpers and clients and between them. Furthermore, helping processes can take place outside as well as inside helping relation ships and after as well as during helping relationships. Another meaning of the word 'process' is that of progression over time, espe cially a progression which involves a series of stages. The two meanings of the word 'process' overlap, in that the processes within and between helpers and clients change as helping progresses through various stages.
Helping process models are simplified step-by-step representations of different goals and activities at progressive stages of helping. They are structured frameworks for viewing the helping process. They pro vide ways of assisting counselling skills students and helpers to think and work more systematically. Helping process models work on the assumption that the use of helping skills is cumulative, and that insufficient application of skills in the earlier stage or stages negatively influences the ability to help in later stages.
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