First Annual Bhutan counseling Conference

FEBRUARY 7-8, 2011

RENEW hosted first annual National Counseling Conference from 7-8 Feb. 2011 in Thimphu in collaboration with the Department of Youth and Sport (MoE), Royal University of Bhutan and Ministry of Health with technical and financial support from National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), USA.The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between RENEW and NBCC for the purpose of expanding mental health and counselors training services in Bhutan in October 2010.

Her Majesty the Queen Mother Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck, the President of RENEW graced the occasion on the 7th February. The other dignitaries were the representatives from Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health,Royal University of Bhutan,UNDP,UNICEF,NCWC,ChithuenPhendey,the member of the NBCC broad of Directors and local counselors. 78 participants from various organizations participated in conference.

The main objective of the conferences was:

• To Lunch the formal NBCC Bhutan initiatives on counseling with partner of RENEW.
• To coordinate and communicate directly with all of the organization which provide counseling services.
• Develop and strengthen counseling service through creating standard and certification procedure for the profession.
• Promote for discussion and upgrade skill and knowledge of counseling professional.

The output of the conference was: the opening of the new field office, NBCC Bhutan, formation of a network of counselor in Bhutan. NBCC Bhutan office will support initiatives to develop the counseling profession, including credentialing mechanisms, and provide other services to counselors such as the organization of counseling activities and Master training on Mental Health facilitation based on the Bhutanese culture and philosophy of spirituality and mindfulness.

The conference offered a platform to provide practical knowledge and skills related to the ongoing application of counseling in Bhutan and the United States. The conference presentations proved to be valuable for the daily counseling practice of the participants, who welcomed about the opportunity for collaboration and mutual professional exchange.

For more details..

http://www.nbcc.org/News/Bhutan

http://www.nbcc.org/Assets/Newsletter/Issues/fall08.pdf

Full time counsellor for every major school

Given the chronic teacher shortage, hard decisions have to be made to accommodate counselling in the curriculum

15 August, 2009 - The ministry of education agrees with full-time Bhutanese counsellors on the urgent need for a comprehensive counselling program in the education curriculum. This will mean a full time counsellor in every school, who addresses not only career guidance, but emotional issues for students as well.

“We’re aware of the situation,” said education secretary, Sangay Zam, on the ineffectiveness of the current teacher-counsellor model. The secretary said the education ministry recognised the need for a dedicated counselling service today and that plans were underway to achieve placing a full time counsellor in, at least, every major school, for now. But she also said, “We can’t address this need overnight, it’ll take some time.”

On what immediate plans the education ministry had to address the lack of a comprehensive counselling program in education, the secretary said, “We’ve recently released some of our best teachers for the counselling courses being offered at RUB (royal university of Bhutan).” The education ministry will also be increasing the number of teachers being sent for six-month diploma courses in India. Once these teachers return, the secretary said, their academic responsibilities will be lessened to partly solve the dual role dilemma teacher-counsellors face.

But the secretary also said the current teacher shortage, which is a major obstacle for such a plan, would be “aggravated”. She said alternative plans are being made to recruit more teachers from abroad and increase the number of contract and volunteer teachers to fill the gap.

On whether introducing a comprehensive counselling system was worth it with the current teacher shortage, Janet Schofield, a psychologist at the royal Thimphu college (RTC) said, “If the resources are available, without cutting into areas that are even more useful, then it’s a useful thing to have.”

But Schofield, who was a high school counsellor in the USA, agreed that a comprehensive counselling system was not only an important but essential part of US education. “It’s considered one of the basic services that are needed,” she said.

Schofield said counselling is important for “periods of transition or change”. Adjusting to change, and figuring out how to live effectively or productively in the new cir*****stances, was one way counselling helps youth, she said. Counsellors in Bhutan attribute much of the increase in emotional problems youth and society are experiencing to the effects of modernisation and commercialisation.

On how effective the counselling system was in the USA, Schofield said, “It’s certainly widespread, and the degree to which they’ve spread suggests that people think they’re worth having.”

President of the centre for Bhutan studies, Dasho Karma Ura, on the other hand, said, “Investment in counselling is treatment of symptoms, though it has also its place, but should be always considered a secondary option.” Instead, Dasho Karma believes the main focus should be in improving “value education and practice of values in the schools, whereby non-cognitive, emotional intelligence and ethical consciousness of the youth are enhanced.” 

Sonam Pelden, a counsellor with the department of youth and sports, agreed that such values needed to be enhanced. But she felt counsellors could fulfill this need, by having full time counsellors teach in the classrooms. She said, rather than teach academic subjects, these counsellors could focus on contemporary issues that the youth face today through forums, discussions and other kinds of activities.

By Gyalsten K Dorji

To Churn out full-time counsellors

National Board for Certified Counsellors-I 10 February, 2011 - School counsellors are considered vital members of an education system anywhere in the western societies.

They assist students towards better academic performance, career and personal development so they become productive citizens when they graduate in future.

Although our education system boasts of trained counsellors in most schools they do more of classroom teaching than counselling.

Paro college of education counsellor Nima said a counsellor in Bhutan shouldered dual responsibility of teaching most of the time and rarely counselling.

“Students identify us as a teacher more than a counsellor,” he said, adding students saw them more as an emphatic teacher than a solicitous counsellor.

Most of the 70 or so counsellors from various schools across the nation, including those from health and education ministry, attended the national counselling conference held in Thimphu, felt Bhutanese society considered the profession more as a disciplinary measure to maintain discipline in the school.

“It’s high time we make them understand the true meaning of counselling,” one of them said.

For this very reason, another counsellor said, the gap existed between students and counsellors in the schools today.

Many explained the need for some real counsellors instead of those who simply became one after attending a few training and workshops.

“Children have emotional, mental and health issues and other social issues that deter them from growing academically and as a person,” one of them said. “Only a full time counsellor would be in a position to help.”

Respect, Educate, Nurture, Empower, Women’s counsellor Tshering Dolkar said most Bhutanese counsellors only attended training and workshops, leaving only a few who really possessed degree certificates in the field.

“This doesn’t make them full-fledged counsellors,” she said. “One should be certified to be a real counsellor.”

A science teacher and counsellor Jigme Tenzin said most Bhutanese counsellors were trained in different area of counselling and mainly career counselling.

Defining the traits of a counsellor, mental health counsellor from National Board Certified Counsellor International, Kevin P Gallagher said they had to be strong and confident with a sense of self.

“They should be able to communicate, advocate and challenge others,” he said. “Above all they should be solution-focused thinking lot.”

He explained Bhutanese school counselling was still under pressure for need of specialised counselling in social, emotional and educative aspects.

“But this will take time to catch up in Bhutanese society,” he said.

Many participating counsellors, however, hope that with the launch of National Board of Certified Counsellors International (NBCC-I), the world’s premier counsellor credentialing body, would help churn out specialised counsellors in Bhutan in near future.

RENEW in collaboration with education and health ministries, Royal University of Bhutan and NBCC-I conducted the conference.

Lip service to school counselling Date: Tuesday, August 11 2009

Current half measures unable to stem growing juvenile delinquency problem11 August, 2009 - With an increase in emotional problems, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, vandalism, and other kinds of delinquency, many Bhutanese say there is something “wrong” with youth today. Some observers even call for corporal punishment to be reintroduced in the education system to curb this problem.

Bhutanese counsellors disagree. They say a rational way to deal with this issue would be to invest more strongly in a comprehensive counselling program instead.
Although counselling was introduced as early as 1996 in Bhutan, the system has been ineffective, say counsellors in the country. The fault, they say, lies not in the concept of counselling but in an inefficient implementation system and unrealistic expectations from not only education officials but society as well.
There are about 300 counsellors distributed throughout the education system in the country today. But these counsellors are also teachers, who serve a dual role. Referred to as teacher-counsellors, these teachers undergo a two-week training course at the royal university of Bhutan (RUB), and are expected to both teach academic subjects and offer counselling, mostly just career guidance, for students.
“We’ve found that this doesn’t work,” said Sonam Jamtsho, a full-time counsellor at the department of youth and sports (DYS). Sonam, who’s been a full-time counsellor for nine years, said that two factors impeded the effectiveness of the role of a teacher-counsellor.
The first was that teacher-counsellors viewed their counselling responsibility as a secondary task. He attributed this relegation not to the teacher but to the process of teachers being assessed at the end of every year on their academic results by the royal civil service commission (RCSC). “With such a system, teacher-counsellors wouldn’t be able to prioritise their counselling role,” he said. This problem is enhanced by the chronic teacher shortage, with teachers bearing more academic responsibilities than normal.
The second obstacle for the teacher-counsellor model was tradition, he said. Students in Bhutan are brought up in a culture where teachers are authoritarian figures to be unconditionally respected or “feared”, he said. With such a perspective, Sonam said, “there is a hesitation by students to open up, they don’t feel comfortable because they believe the information they reveal may be used against them.”
Sonam Pelden, a DYS counsellor, agreed with her colleague on the obstacles impeding the teacher-counsellor model in Bhutan. Sonam, who has been a counsellor for eight years, said school dropouts dealing with unemployment and substance abuse was a common and increasing issue she dealt with. “Young people are finding it very difficult to cope up with commercialisation, especially when they come from economically disadvantaged families.”
Tshering Dolkar, a counsellor at RENEW for nine years, said other issues like domestic violence, rape, sexual and emotional abuse, sexual exploitation, homosexuality, incest, paedophilia and other mental health issues were increasing and affecting youth. “We need to look at how we can really address these issues through external means,” she said. “We need the right people in the right places. A person, who’s a graduate in Arts or Math, placed to counsel our youth, isn’t right.”
But Bhutanese counsellors say one major obstacle for counselling in the country is a misconception by the public on what it means.
“Sit with the counsellor for an hour, and then they’ll come out all right, cured,” said Sonam Jamtsho, on the misconception. People need to understand that counselling is long term, and that sometimes a person may not even be “cured”, he said. “Counselling is a helping process where you provide a listening ear, and the person talking to you shares their concerns and issues,” said Tshering Dolkar. “Then you discuss and analyse what’s really troubling the person, together.” Sonam Pelden summarised the concept of counselling as exploring ways for the client to find hope.
Asked if, during their experience, counselling worked for their clients in Bhutan, the counsellors said yes. “We’ve seen it change the lives of people,” said Tshering Dolkar. But she reiterated that, for it to be successful, counsellors needed to be properly trained. On how they measured the success of counselling, RENEW counsellor, Tshering said, her organisation had a monitoring program, which followed up on clients.
The ideal situation Bhutanese counsellors would like to see is full-time counsellors gradually introduced for every school in Bhutan. There are less than 15 full time counsellors in the country today.
Although they acknowledge teacher shortage as a critical obstacle in achieving this situation, the counsellors say, with the changes Bhutan is undergoing as a result of development, the need for professional counselling for youth is urgent if we want to mitigate the negative aspects of modernisation.

By Gyalsten K Dorji 

Naropa advises counselling overhaul