McAuliffe's Culturally Alert Counseling Series Released on DVD
Infusing culture into counseling work is the goal of a new, comprehensive set of DVDs on working with diverse clients that was produced by Garrett McAuliffe, University Professor of counseling at Old Dominion University.
"Culturally Alert Counseling: Demonstrations of Key Practices with African American, Asian, Latino/Latina, Conservative Religious, and Lesbian/Gay Clients" is now available in a boxed set, which also includes resource guides and a book, "Culturally Alert Counseling: A Comprehensive Introduction."
The six-DVD set, guides and book are published by Sage Publications.
"The DVDs are guided, explicit demonstrations of how to seamlessly infuse culture into counseling sessions. This is a first-of-its-kind product, one that will be needed as the counseling field embraces all clients from all groups in our society," McAuliffe explained.
"Above all fields, counseling requires modeling of sessions and skills in realistic settings. Here, eight sessions are conducted with counselors narrating introductions to the central issues for working with each group."
McAuliffe notes that two of the DVDs are groundbreaking. One is the video on counseling for youth who are questioning their sexual identity, or coming out to themselves or others. The other is on working with religious conservatives.
The video on gay affirmative counseling "is especially important for all counselors, including those in schools, agencies, private practice and colleges, as the knowledge gained from the video can save clients' lives," McAuliffe said.
The first video in the set is also unique. It is the first demonstration of a complete set of multicultural counseling skills, founded on the best current research, that can be applied to infusing gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, race and/or social class into counseling.
Each session in the DVD set was scripted to highlight common topics. Subtitles teach viewers the counseling skills being used as well as the cultural issues that clients are exhibiting. The vignettes were created in consultation with national experts in each area.
The DVD set received funding from ODU Faculty Innovator and Faculty Development grants. The university's Office of Distance Learning produced the videos, led by video project director and editor Kirby Broyles from the video production unit.
Playing counselor roles in the videos are Old Dominion faculty members Tim Grothaus and Tammi Milliken from the counseling and human services programs in the Darden College of Education. University academic advisers Arminda Israel and Jose Ramos, faculty member Gwen Lee-Thomas and counseling students play the roles of clients.
A promotional segment from the DVD set can be viewed on YouTube at: