This practical bestseller from leading expert Richard Nelson-Jones introduces the essential counselling skills for the helping professions. Now in its fourth edition, it guides trainees through the key skills for helping work across a range of settings, such as counselling, nursing, social work, youth work, education and many more.

This practical bestseller from leading expert Richard Nelson-Jones introduces the essential counselling skills for the helping professions. Now in its fourth edition, it guides you through the key skills for helping work across a range of settings, such as counselling, nursing, social work, youth work, education and many more. It explores 17 key counselling skills, including: 

-asking questions
-monitoring
-facilitating problem solving
-negotiating homework 

Each chapter describes a particular skill, illustrates it using clear case examples across a range of settings and then helps you consolidate and practise what you′ve learned through a set of creative activities. 

Further chapters cover professional issues including a new chapter on managing crises and chapters on ethical dilemmas, supervision, working with diversity and more.

Introduction
Who are counsellors and helpers?
What are basic counselling skills?
Helpers and helpees as diverse persons
What you bring to counselling and helping
The helping relationship
The helping process
Specific counselling skills
Understanding the internal frame of reference
Showing attention and interest
Paraphrasing and reflecting feelings
Starting, structuring and summarizing
Asking questions
Monitoring
Offering challenges and feedback
Self-disclosing
Managing resistances and making referrals
Facilitating problem solving
Coaching, demonstrating and rehearsing
Improving helpees’ self-talk
Improving helpees’ rules
Improving helpees’ perceptions
Negotiating homework
Conducting middle sessions
Ending helping
Further considerations
Introduction to relaxation
Managing crises
Ethical issues and dilemmas
Multicultural and gender aware helping
Getting support and being supervised
Becoming more skilled
Appendix 1 Annotated bibliography
Appendix 2 Professional associations in Britain, Australia and America