When coming to counselling, a client naturally focuses on their issue – presenting problem which often has become magnified for them. With Human Social Functioning, whilst the client’s need and focus are respected, the use of the HSSF (the questionnaire), assists both client and counsellor to see the bigger picture: where the client is functioning well in addition to the immediate difficulties that have brought the client to seek help.
The HSSF looks at a spread of areas that contribute to human satisfaction and a further group of areas that tend to cause frustration. It can be drawn out to give a visual representation, a ‘life diagram’, that enables the client to see his or her inner world objectively.
Positive benefits include an immediate shared understanding of the feeling world of the client, which deepens a sense of truly being heard.
Also, using the diagnostic qualities of the HSSF, there can be clarity for the counsellor of likely issues, the availability of support and an indication of the longevity and depth of therapy.
Course Content
Presenter
MPhil. Dip PC., BACP Senior Accredited Counsellor and Supervisor, BASF Practitioner & Trainer
A background in teaching, living in Tanzania in a needy expatriate community, bringing up a family along with experience of personal ill health contributed to my move into counselling.
I have been counselling for over 30 years and supervising for 20: training with an eclectic mix of humanistic therapies with Human Social Functioning as a core training. During the last 30 years in addition to counselling and psychotherapy, with a particular interest in trauma and change, I have enjoyed a pioneering role within two organisations.
As co-founder of a holistic charity HealthLink360 (www.healthlink360.org) in 1983 where I successfully developed its psychological resources and, within that agency, trained and facilitated an innovative team who offered assessment, life mentoring and counselling to those whose work involved leadership, change or trauma; and
As chair of The British Association for Social Functioning (www.basf.org.uk), the organisation that represents Human Social Functioning (HSF) in the UK: HSF is a therapeutic approach incorporating a unique questionnaire the Heimler Scale of Social Functioning (HSSF) that assists individuals to make important life changes by understanding their current strengths and challenges in functioning. BASF is growing: training practitioners in the UK and Internationally.
I am now working as a private practitioner and supervisor.
