GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING

Guidance is assistance given to an individual to help him, to adjust to himself, to others and to his own peculiar environment. Guidance helps him to understand himself. It helps him in his acquaintance with the things and the world around him. Finally, it helps the person to seek harmony between his personal needs and ambitions with peculiarities of his own environment. In this way, guidance can be described as a process of assisting an individual with his adjustment problems. Thus, according to Jones, "Guidance is the help given by one person to another in making choices and adjustments and in solving problems". While Skinner says "Guidance is a process of helping young persons learns to adjust to self, to others, and to circumstances".

Guidance aims to prepare an individual for his future life. It helps him to acquire essential skills, abilities and capacities for the tasks to be accomplished in future. It also helps the individual in selecting a proper future profession and role in the society and enables him to play his role successfully. Guidance has personal and social significance. It aims to help an individual in the process of his adjustment with himself and his environment. It helps him to develop his strengths and abilities, to achieve utmost personal and social efficiency. It also aims to stop wastage of human power and physical resources by helping the individuals to find their place in society.

Thus, we can say that GUIDANCE is the process of helping an individual to help himself and to develop his potentialities to the fullest by utilizing the maximum opportunities provided by the environment.

Guidance and Counselling

On the other hand, COUNSELLING is the service offered to the individual, who is undergoing a problem and needs professional help to overcome it. The problem keeps him disturbed, high strung, under tension and unless solved, his development is hampered or stunted. Counselling therefore, is a more specialized service requiring training in personality development and handling exceptional groups of individuals. For example, individuals suffering from sensory handicaps like, visually handicapped, deaf and mute, speech disorders, or from physical handicaps like malfunctioning of glands or vital organs; orthopaedically handicapped; personal-social handicaps like, neurotics, psychotics, depressed isolates or from intellectual retardation or exceptionally high talent and so on. In other words, when the development is not normal because of certain handicaps, the individual needs help to be able to adjust to the environmental pressures and learn to overcome his handicaps or at least accept them squarely.

COUNSELLING services are therefore, required for individuals having developmental problems, because of the handicap they suffer in any area of growth like, physical, mental, moral, social and emotional, either because of hereditary factors or environmental conditions.

Counselling therefore is offered to only those individuals who are under serious problem and need professional help to overcome it, while guidance is needed by all at any time.

Both guidance and counselling assist the individual to know about himself, to adjust himself, with others and the environment and thus lead the individual to become a WHOLESOME PERSON.

Philosophy of guidance

Guidance is universal and the basic principles of the philosophy of guidance are common to all countries with a slight modification to suit the locally accepted beliefs and the specific guidance services offered. The eight principles of the philosophy of guidance are:

1. The dignity of the individual is supreme.
2. Each individual is unique. He or she is different from every other individual.
3. The primary concern of guidance is the individual in his own social setting. The main aim being to help him to become a wholesome person and to gain fullest satisfaction in his life.
4. The attitudes and personal perceptions of the individual are the bases on which he acts.
5. The individual generally acts to enhance his perceived self.
6. The individual has the innate ability to learn and can be helped to make choices that will lead to self-direction, and make him consistent with the social environment.
7. The individual needs a continuous guidance process from early childhood through adulthood.
8. Each individual may, at times, need the information and personalized assistance best given by competent professional personnel.

The goals to achieve in guidance

At present, Guidance has taken an unprecedented lead over all the other helping professions, for it empowers an individual to charter his life successfully, inspite of all odds.

The main goals are :

1. Exploring-self: The basic aim is to help an individual increase his understanding and acceptance of self; his physical development, his intelligence, aptitudes, interest, personality traits, attitudes and values, his achievements in scholastic and other spheres, his aspirations and life-style preferences and above all his here -and-now needs which keep him highly motivated to behave positively or otherwise.
2. Determining Values: The second aim is to help an individual recognize the importance of values, explore different sets of values, determine personal values and examine them in relation to the norms of society and their importance in planning for success in life.
3. Setting Goals: This aim is to help an individual set goal for him self and relate these to the values determined by him so that he recognizes the importance of long-range planning.
4. Explore the World of Work: The aim here is to help the individual explore the World of Work in relation to his self-exploration, his value system and goals that he has set for himself to achieve success in life.
5. Improving Efficiency: The individual is helped to learn about factors which contribute to increase effectiveness and efficiency and to improve his study habits.
6. Building Relationship: The aim is to help the individual to be aware of his relationship with others and to note that it is a reflection of his own feelings about himself.
7. Accepting responsibility for the future: The individual is helped to develop skill in social and personal forecasting, acquire attitudes and skills necessary for mastering the future.

To sum up, guidance empowers him to be an integrated individual, actualizing his potential to the fullest.

Why guidance?

Guidance is needed at every stage of development right from the beginning of life till the end. Everyone needs guidance at one time or the other. If properly guided, every individual will be satisfied in life.