endless addition of programs without at- ... definitely without sacrificing quality. If counseling centers are .... I reach for a brass ring I can't live without. Unable to ...
Counseling centers and the issue of accountability
EDWARD L. TREMBLEY JOHN 6. BISHOP
The au":ors discuss responses that college and university counseling centers have made to the budgetary attacks now occurring. Thy stress the importance of accountability and suggest types of data that counseling center personnel might use in developing effectivejustijicationsfor the expenditure q f u n d s on the services that they provide.
It is increasingly evident that college and university counseling centers have come under attack in the past few years (Warnath 1971, 1972). Reports of drastic cuts in operating budgets, reductions in personnel, unfavorable administrative realignments, and in some cases the termination of entire services occur with disturbing frequency. While each report reflects unique circumstances in the given institution, there do appear to be consistencies in the nature of these attacks and in the responses that counseling centers make to them. T h e following assessment of the kinds of responses that may be made in such situations is applicable not only to university counseling centers but to student personnel services in general, and at all educational levels. THE BUDGETARY AlTACK
T h e most obvious reason that the value of college and university counseling centers is being questioned today is the fiscal crisis that besets our institutions. Money is scarce, and, understandably, institutions are closely examining their budgets PERSONNEL AND GUIDANCE JOURNAL
and questioning expenditure priorities. Less understandably, many administrators and faculty members who have responsibilities for budgetary decisions are questioning whether counseling services are partly o r completely expendable. These questions are based on matters of budgetary expediency, coupled with the all-too-common view of counseling services as nonessential to the mission of the university. However, there often are opportunities for counseling services to respond to the questions that are being asked and to offer justifications for the monies they expend. Counseling center personnel have chosen a number of ways to respond, with varying degrees of success. COUNSELING CENTER RESPONSES Denial
Some counseling centers respond to budgetary attacks by choosing to ignore and deny them as much as possible. To be successful, such an approach would be dependent on a considerable amount of political power or the assumption that an ostrichlike posture will make the issue go away. It is fair to say that few counseling
EDWARD L. TREMBLEY and JOHN B. BISHOP are Director and Associate Director, respectively, of the Center for Counseling and Student Development, University of Delaware, Newark.
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centers have ever been known as bastions of political power. It is just as obvious that the argument that there is safety in being nebulous and ethereal will melt quickly under the scrutiny of today’s accountability processes. To adopt such a position is to hope that one will not be asked to be held accountable, and that is an increasingly unrealistic idea. Institutional Advocacy
A second type of response that centers make to budgetary attacks is their assumption of new institutional roles, defined not by themselves but by others. These new roles may be counterproductive to counselors’ traditional therapeutic roles (Warnath 1972), since counselors may be asked to operate as advocates of the institution rather than of students, a role that often conflicts with their student relationships. Some counselors may agree with Warnath’s thesis that the problem is largely insolvable and that counseling centers are only tools of institutional managers who care about the protection of systems rather than people. Counselors who hold this viewpoint may move to noncampus agencies, offer their services for fees off campus, seek student government fiscal support, or merge with nonprofessional groups. Such movements seem premature unless one is convinced that counselors are really no more than tools of institutional managers. There is room for reasonable debate on this point and certainly not enough evidence to proclaim that an unchecked national trend has Ceveloped. There are times when a counselor’s work with clients does involve conflict with systems and results in the assumption of an advocacy role, a role in which the counselor helps clients represent their interests and in which the destructive characteristics of a system may be challenged. Sometimes counselors and clients are successful in gaining system modifications, sometimes they are not. 648
At the risk of oversimplification, these situations do not seem significantly different from life outside our universities. Could it be that too many counselors, in the sanctity of the traditional therapy model, have assumed an attitude of being unaccountable to anyone, save their clients? The situation is not that simplistic. Client welfare is the counselor’s primary concern and responsibility, if one abides by APA and APGA ethics, but the point is that ethical codes do not preclude the necessity and legitimacy of institutional accountability. In no way does a counselor’s deep and abiding concern for the welfare and growth of clients always, or even usually, imply conflict with the institutional decision-making or valuing systems that form the context in which the work is done. Traditional
Reemphasizing the traditional remedial role of counselors is a third type of response that counseling centers make to budgetary attacks. Underlying this response is the assumption that remedial services are understood and xcepted by faculty and administrators and are therefore less likely to be questioned. Centers taking this stance often dismiss outreach and developmental programs as inconsistent with the training of counseling psychologists, misunderstood by others in the university, and tangential to the true work of the counselor, i.e., therapy. This traditional response runs counter to current notions in counseling that call upon counselors to reach out to the developing student and the student’s environment in order to foster positive development in both (Drum & Figler 1973; Oetting, Ivey & Weigel 1970). Outreach concepts and developmentally oriented services are mainstream contemporary notions in counseling literature and training programs, and to reject them VOL. 5 2 , NO. 10, JUNE 1974
reflects a philosophical retrenchment to an earlier era. Faculty and administrators are also becoming increasingly skeptical of expensive remedial services, notwithstanding the fact that these services are understood. It is entirely possible that “understanding” remedial services also means appreciating their high costs per client. Institutional administrators seem ready to believe that counseling centers pamper students, and they see little value in teaching students that therapeutic help is available, free of charge, on request. While these criticisms may be as traditional as the services they attack, the stakes in the current debates are fiscal in nature and the exercise is no longer simply a philosophical one. Outreach
Stressing outreach and personal growth programs beyond their established remedial and crisis-management services is a fourth way centers respond to budgetary questions. This has meant an increase in the number and types of activities sponsored by a center, beyond the established programs of individual and group counseling. Counseling center staff members are asked to extend their skills beyond their offices and to serve as consultants, student development specialists, preventive mental health workers, and educators (Parker 1974). T h e developmental role of a counseling center is one that has the potential of helping all students, either healthy or disturbed, to benefit maximally from the educational environment (Kirk et al. 1971). Outreach programs can be designed to reach and be helpful to large numbers of individuals, while being viewed as complementary to the overall thrust of higher education. In addition, the consultative role allows the counseling psychologist to have an impact on the various environments of an institution, hopefully in ways that will promote student growth along many dimensions. PERSONNEL AND GUIDANCE JOURNAL
PROBLEMS IN EXTENDING SERVICES THROUGH OUTREACH
While many of the ideas about outreach programming have considerable merit and permit an effective parry to budgetary attacks, the process of changing the counseling center’s role on campus is often handled poorly. The new roles required of staff members sometimes demand skills, time, and energies that go beyond the traditional expectations. This can result in a situation in which administrators as well as staff members are guilty of neglecting their own professional standards in their haste to become innovative. What must be avoided is an endless addition of programs without attendant increases in the human resources o r attendant deletions of some established functions. Staff resources are limited and cannot be extended indefinitely without sacrificing quality. If counseling centers are asked to broaden and extend their services, the number of staff members cannot remain constant or be reduced. If staff members are asked to extend their skills or undertake programs that require new skills, then inservice training must be provided if quality outcomes are expected. Counseling center personnel must find convincing ways to articulate these concerns to campus administrators if they hope to maintain their own professional standards and escape being put in the position of providing services that are of known poor quality. T h e problem of articulating a philosophy of service seems particularly difficult for those centers that are changing the nature and thrust of their programs. Many counselors were trained to perform the traditional functions and, despite the theoretical differences within a staff, counseling center personnel have usually been able to articulate what was meant by counseling and psychotherapy so that others could understand their work. Counseling centers d o have 649
difficulty, however, trying to explain a concept such as student development. The inability to generate arguments that speak authoritatively and persuasively about such a program may promote confusion rather than understanding among the decision makers; the selfdefeating properties of this dilemma are obvious. Since there are sound professional arguments and increased consumer demands for outreach programming in order to bring developmental services to a wide range of clientele, contemporary counseling services need to give serious consideration to such programs. This may mean that the priorities of a counselingcenter must change over time. Strong arguments can be mounted that a responsive counseling service should, in fact, change its modes of operation as the needs of the campus community change.
THE ACCOUNTABILITY QUESTION
Counseling centers may find themselves making inadequate responses to budgetary threats because of an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that the name of the game is accountability. The real question is: Are the services of the counseling center, however defined, worth the expenditures necessary to maintain them? Those who adopt any of the four types of responses discussed above need to recognize that none will obviate the need to provide accountability data. Philosophies of service may vary, but the need for accountability data is a constant. Institutions might at any time legitimately raise questions about the value of services on which monies are expended. One would hope that the questions are asked in times other than those marked by fiscal crises and that they are asked of all units of the institution. Nonetheless, it is essential that counseling centers be able to speak about the purpose, scope, 650
and value of their services and provide supporting data. This activity should not be held in reserve by centers for use only in difficult economic or political times; speaking to the accountability question should be a routine center activity, since institutions, just as individuals who pay for professional services, deserve an accounting of what that expenditure brings. Accountability questions often arise because counseling centers have erroneously made the assumption that institutional decision makers understand the functions of the center. It would seem particularly risky these days to rest on such assumptions, since the consequences can be devastating-and the center may not even know that its worth is beingjudged on inadequate data until after the fact. Even under the best of political-fiscal circumstances, it is perhaps too much to expect a misinformed administrator to make a rational decision about programs, services, and people that are not understood or, even worse, misunderstood. Informing institutional administrators and faculty about a center’s activities does not guarantee that these people will agree with the value of those activities, but it may improve the probability that decisions will be made on accurate data, or even in spite of it, but at least not on the basis of false impressions. It is time for counseling center personnel to acknowledge that the concept of accountability is both rational and legitimate and that thorough responses to accountability questions can result in a strengthening of the institution’s commitment to the service.
TYPES OF ACCOUNTABILITY DATA
As counseling centers respond to budgetary attacks and confront accountability questions, there is a consistent need to generate solid accountability data that describe the centers’ services to VOL. 52, NO. 10, JUNE 1974
the campus community. Counseling center annual reports presenting data on number of clients served in counseling and providing subjective statements about staff competence are necessary, but not sufficient, for answering accountability questions. This point is particularly valid for centers that have moved to a developmental outreach model. Centers can afford to be hard-nosed about their competence, work load, and institutional value only if hard data attest to these virtues. Although a center’s institutional value may be ultimately determined by others, centers can employ at least three types of accountability data in presenting their case for consideration by institutional administrators.
budgetary costs associated with the priorities. Consumer Data
Increasingly, centers must attempt to study the outcomes of their services to the consumers, who include faculty members, other professionals, and offcampus personnel as well as counseling clients. Outcome research is difficult to perform, and measurement instruments are far from perfect, but neither of these limitations is a sufficient reason to avoid asking center consumers for direct feedback about the center’s work. There can be a positive spin-off effect from this research in that consumers begin to feel a part of a constituency group that supports the center.
Internal Data
Centers can establish systems that record the type, number, and clientele of their outreach activities in addition to collecting the usual client contact data. Furthermore, systems that record the amount of staff time spent in all center activities are simple to devise and require little investment to maintain (Krumboltz 1974). These data are instructive for center- personnel, since they indicate breadth of activities as well as degree of congruence between agency priorities and actual center time expenditures. Discrepancies between priorities and time invested demand that a center reexamine its priorities and staff activities. Center priority-setting is a complex task, since individual staff members hold different priorities and others on campus hold still other disparate expectations of what a center should do. Albeit untidy, the situation is manageable. By using internal data as a target for discussion, staff workshops can yield the necessary level of consensus on agency directions. Not only can centers establish the extent to which their priority goals are being met and at what personnel costs, but determination can also be made of the PERSONNEL AND GUIDANCE JOURNAL
Judgments of Other Professionals
A third type of accountability data is the data obtained from an off-campus evaluation agency or team. Whether such an evaluation comes from a professional organization, such as the International Association of Counseling Services, or a temporary group created for just one occasion, there is considerable merit to opening oneself to those who can be objective and hold themselves above the politics of any particular campus. The credibility of such efforts is often greater than that of other forms of evaluation for just that reason. In addition, counseling center personnel may receive considerable professional benefits, because such evaluators are often in the position of introducing new ideas that are in operation in other counseling settings.
CONCLUSION
As budgets in higher education have become tighter, some counseling centers have not made satisfactory responses to budgetary attacks, possibly because they 65 1
have not been permitted or able to argue their case with the decision makers. There have been, and in all probability will continue to be, situations in which institutional politics lead to negative decisions regarding counseling services or some of their personnel. Despite these situations, however, many counseling centers will have the opportunity to provide evidence of their value and to continue as important services on the campus. For these centers it is imperative that the importance of accountability be recognized, along with the fact that one or another program strategy will not becloud the real issue. As long as the question is a budgetary one, the answers must be derived from systems and statements that speak to the issue of accountability.
REFERENCES Drum, D. J.. & Figler, H. E. Outreach in counseling. New York: Intext, 1973. Kirk, B. A , ; Free, J . E.; Johnson, A. P.; Michel, J . ; Redfield, J . E.; Roston, R. A.; & Warman, R. D. Guidelines for university and college counseling centers. American Psychologist, 1971,26, 585-589. Krumboltz, J . D. An accountability model forcounselors. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1974, 52, 639-646. Oetting, E. R.; Ivey, A. E.; & Weigel, R. C. The college and university counseling center. ACPA Monograph No. 1 1 . Washington, D.C.: American Personnel and Guidance Association, 1970. Parker, C. A. (Ed.)Special Issue: Thirty-six facesof counseling. Personnel and Guzdance Journal, 1974, 5 2 , 341-440. Warnath, C. New myths and old realities: College counseling in transition. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 1971. Warnath, C. College counseling: Between the rock and the hard place. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1972,51, 229-235.
Unshaped Dreams
I am engulfed in a cloud of unshaped dreams, As I try to follow my heart. Future goals are hazy, it seems, Or forgotten before I am able to start. It i s time to decide on a path to follow
To play the game of being a man. The paths society offers seem so hollow, But mine i s lost for lack of a plan.
Riding a blind horse on life’s carousel, I reach for a brass ring I can’t live without. Unable to find it, in darkness I dwell, And life in the present holds a future of doubt.
FRED P. PIERCY Graduate student, University of Florida, Gainesville
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