A cross-cultural counselling programme for adolescents traumatised by family violence

Abstract

The study was undertaken to address the problem of effective counselling of adolescents exposed to family violence in a multicultural society. There is a growing body of research with regard to family violence, which has intensified since the end of 1998 with the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act no. 116. An additional complication to the phenomenon of family violence as a traumatic experience is the influence of culture. The characteristics of a multicultural society are explored, in order to determine the needs of the traumatised adolescent within the cross-cultural counselling context. During the literature study the researcher became sensitised to the fact that currently established cross-cultural counselling models do not meet the challenges of a multicultural society like South Africa. Intervention in a cross-cultural setting is highly complicated and this demands that an alternative counselling model be designed prior to the development of an effective cross-cultural counselling programme. Intervention Research design, as suggested by Rothman and Thomas (1994), is implemented by means of the qualitative case study method, and led to the development of the C 4 model and C 4 programme. The C 4 programme employs a therapeutic facilitation process that is based on a unique self-developed model of counselling, which rests on the principles of awareness, acceptance, availability and accommodating. The model and programme is context-centred, as opposed to person-centred, in order to distinguish the model from the school of person-centred counselling, as developed by Carl Rogers. The term context-centred implies that the individual is the only authority of his trauma experience. Therefore, it can be assumed that he is the one who can fit his trauma experience into the context of his own life and how it translates into his relationships with others. The intervention is deemed to have had effective results in terms of the adolescents' progress, and the accomplishment of the stated overall and specific aims of the programme. Adjustments were made to process, content and implementation procedures, thereby achieving the desired and intended outcomes.