Ava Make Up Essentials

How to arrange a therapy room to make it comfortable for child counselling?

Im studying a course in counselling and this is a question for one of my assignments, but cant find any info in my notes or literature, internet been no help? Any ideas what I can put? I presume that toys and pictures would not be correct as they would be distractional, and one of the fundamentals of counselling is to provide a non-distractional environment, so what can I write?

Public Comments

1. i had a lot of councelling when i was younger cos i had quite a hard childhood and i hated it so much when they just sat there with a notepad asking you questions. my favourite one was where they took you in a room with colouring pencils and paints and toys so you could play and talk at the same time. although it may be seen as distracting, i found it much easier to talk when i was pre-occupied with something fun. its the best way to get through to children i think, well it worked for me anyway :)
2. at a local nursery, they have a chill-out room for kids when they're tired or upset... they have these wonderful soft chairs that can provide an enclosed space with different coloured lights... the whole area is space-age- very modern / out of this world... very imaginative...
3. From the point of view of a former victim of child counselors, who got no good whatever from all the system's dogooder attempts, I have to point out that how you arrange the room depends entirely on the child. In my case the counsellor had a very austere room, and took the traditional make him comfortable and eliminate all distraction approach. I clearly remember (after nearly 50 years) the drone of the adult and the feel of the room. I spent my hour looking out the window, or admiring the print on the wall. Renoir, I think. The counsellor spent all their time trying to get me to talk about peripheral things, and achieved nothing. If they had simply spread some Lego on the floor and joined me with it I am sure we would have gotten down to the beatings and sodomy I was getting at home. Instead he achieved nothing. As a survivor of child abuse who healed himself in his late twenties I recall the system's attempts to deal with my behaviour as laughable. They fueled my contempt for the concept of counselling by their inflexibility and doctrine. Children are active, and an intelligent child will distract himself with the shape of your eyeglasses, the colour of the carpet or the way Renoir painted his daughter's hands. It would defeat the parenting skills of the Almighty to create a distraction free environment. Set the room up any way you want, in accordance with all the best scholastically determined theories, but be ready to squat on the floor and ask questions while you build a castle or a spaceship. One gets you five that the child will answer more honestly and with less suspicion than if you sit him down and ask questions directly. Of course, if the counsellor had asked me point blank if my father was beating me up, or the neighbour was buggering me senseless, I might have told him as well. He asked about stupid things and played games with ink blots and pennies. This will not help with a doctrinaire test, for which I am sorry, but once you get past the intellectual tyranny of the course outline it might help some battered kid. Tailor the room to the child, not the child to the theory.
4. Depends what sort of counselling/therapy. A'white board' on the wall is good forchildren towrite or draw some of the things they can't bring themselves to say - also lets you diagram things for them - aids communication. Soft furnishings. A nearby loo (obviously in it's own room!). A doll's house, furniture and 'people' are good so that the child can recreate or rearrange things (actual events or symbolic). Paper plates and coloured pens to make 'mood masks/faces' to help explore feelings.You can't force a child to engage or focus, no matter how non-distractional the environment. Something similar to things listed above woulod help engage the child while allowing the counsellor tolead the session - In my opinion - as someone who works with children who have experienced multiple trauma in their lives. Whatever you decide,it surely needs to be child-centred and child-focussed other wise it defeats the object