Brief Counseling That Works: A Solution-Focused Approach for School Counselors and Administrators

by Gerald B. Sklare

"This book will aid adults who seek to be more effective in their interactions with youth, but even more important, it offers a framework to help school personnel reconnect to the values and purposes that brought them into education and keep their interactions with children consistently grounded in their best intentions."
William Madsen, Training Coordinator
Family Institute of Cambridge

"What you are about to read represents an ingenious application of narrative ideas to work in schools. While many people use these ideas, this book develops them in novel and interesting ways. This is some of the most creative and exciting work I have seen in this field."
Jeffrey Zimmerman, Director
Bay Area Family Therapy Training Associates

Reduce discipline problems, improve relationships, and help students achieve their goals!

With caseloads often exceeding 500 students, counselors cannot afford to spend countless hours on traditional approaches to individual problems. Solution-Focused Brief Counseling (SFBC) offers counselors an effective approach that leads to rapid, observable change in students.

Brief Counseling That Works, Second Edition, combines step-by-step instructions with vivid case examples to provide a comprehensive and practical overview of the fundamental principles of SFBC. Author Gerald B. Sklare has extensively revised this second edition to include new adaptations of solution-focused methods, more opportunities to practice the SFBC model, and an expanded discussion of ways school administrators can use SFBC.

This concise guidebook contains many valuable tools, including:

Reproducible materials for use with Solution-Focused Guided Imagery Short case studies and session transcripts to illustrate what SFBC looks like in practice Guidelines for using solution-focused methods with referred discipline cases Practice exercises to help readers apply the techniques Sample forms to use in SFBC

This essential resource for counselors will also be helpful to teachers and school administrators who advise elementary and secondary students, as well as psychologists and social workers who work with youth both in and out of the school setting.

Genres: Counselling, Psychology

184 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 1997

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changed the way I spoke to kids and to myself.

[Timm · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the overworked counselors out there. There is much power in brief, efficient counseling strategies.

[Michaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh, what a good resource. Sklare does a great job explaining the theoretical principles of SFBC while showing readers how to easily apply them to our work. I highly recommend this to School Counselors.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how this handled the first session and the key SFBT terms, but I feel like it was less helpful for planning subsequent sessions

[Ann Pritchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually the text book for my practicum class in School Counseling but I really liked it.

[Mitzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for work and found it to be very resourceful. With caseloads of 400+ students, school counselors simply do not have the time to spend endless hours, days, or weeks with each and every student who is having some kind of struggle. This book offers a great (brief) approach to help students come up with their own solutions and focus on what's working (or will work) rather than dwelling on the problems. I will be implementing several strategies with my one-on-one interactions with students, small-group sessions, and even the guided imagery techniques when going into classrooms to teach coping-with-anxiety lessons.