Roles of the Drug Abuse Counselor in a Correctional Facility

• NCJ Number: 72339
• Journal: Journal of Employment Counseling Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1979) Pages: 245-251
• Author(s): P M Beamish; R C Page; S M Smith
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 7 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Authority, counseling, and intercessor roles are outlined for drug abuse counselors in correctional institutions, together with potential role conflicts and their effects on both the counselors and their clients.

Abstract

The primary role of drug abuse counselors is to provide the client or inmate with a positive and helping relationship. Yet these counselors must also maintain custodial and security control over those inmates entrusted to their care; inmates thus expect the counselors to enforce rules and regulations and to notify authorities when regulations are violated. The counselor, by role modeling a positive authority figure can help clients confront their negative perceptions and differentiate these from realistic perceptions. In a nurturing, supportive manner, the counselor can help set and enforce acceptable behavioral limits and help the client to cope with his perceived feelings of vulnerability before authority figures. To gain confidentiality and trust, counselors should refer to American Personnel and Guidance Association ethics guidelines to learn just how far the promise of confidentiality can be taken. Once counselors have resolved this issue, they can establish a basis for trust with their clients by communicating to them the limits of confidentiality. Clients tend to vent their anger, hostility, and aggression upon counselors, who often accept such behavior until the client is helped to resolve those feelings in more satisfactory ways. The intercessor role helps a counselor demonstrate that he is trustworthy and genuninely interested in the wellbeing of his clients as he intercedes on their behalf with other professionals in the institution, and maintains good mutual relations with all those whose authority may impact his clients. A residential treatment program would help counselors by empowering them to deal with violations, and by having rule infractions become the responsibility of the entire therapeutic community; in this way, authority roles would be better integrated into the counseling role. Whatever the case, counselors must be emotionally secure, able to deal with repeated disappointment, and determined to set realistic goals. Thirteen references are provided.