A Collaborative Approach to Career Counselling for Clients with Disabilities Using Counselling-based Career Assistance

Abstract

This research paper addresses the collaborative approach in using counselling-based career assistance, such as clients’ strengths for career counselling of persons with disabilities in Malaysia. The paper responds to Malaysia’s public policy of social transformation by providing the collaborative approach for career counselling of clients with disabilities. It is noted that the collaborative approach in using counselling-based career assistance is applicable to persons with mild to moderate developmental or learning disabilities and these clients are able to benefit from career counselling so as to hold jobs. In this way, this paper aims to create awareness among career counsellors by highlighting that:(1) counsellors can assist as collaborators to engage clients in therapeutic relationships in the counselling process so as to shift the focus from clients’ problems towards focusing on the clients’ strengths; (2) counsellors are mindful of the clients’ problems but collaborate with the clients to source for clients’ strengths; and (3) counsellors collaborate with clients so that clients use these strengths to come up with doable options that clients can implement so as to be more effective in advancing their career and to attain better psychological well-being. As such, it is not intended in this paper to discuss the methodology of building therapeutic relationships and the reporting of the progress of the various stages of counselling. For the purpose of this paper, an example case is selected so that a counselling session can be edited to show portions that illustrate the use of counselling-based career assistance in the collaborative approach.