Discovering a relationship: adolescents' insights into the counselling relationship in a secondary school setting

This study was designed to explore, with five grade twelve students, their understandings of the counselling relationships they shared with their counsellors in a single northern B.C. secondary school setting. The investigation was guided by four questions: (1) What conditions make it possible for the students to talk to a school counsellor? (2) What conditions give students the confidence to share private and confidential information with their counsellor? (3) What are the critical incidents during their counselling which affected the development of the counselling relationship? (4) What were the characteristic elements that constituted the counselling relationship between a school counsellor and a student client? Participants were identified by their school counsellors based on the following criteria: (1) the students were grade twelve students, (2) they were familiar with the counselling programme in their school, (3) they had developed a personal counselling relationship with the students, ( 4) the students could articulate their understandings of those relationships, and (5) they had not had a counselling relationship with the researcher. A series of open ended, in-depth interviews were conducted with the students. Grounded Theory method was used to analyse the data that was transcribed from these interviews. A conceptual model of the counselling relationship was developed consisting of five stages: the Motivating Stage, the Initiating Stage, the Comfort Stage, the Working Alliance Stage, and the Change Stage. Each stage was further divided into Key Categories and Subsidiary Categories that provided insights into conditions that fostered the development of the counselling relationship in the secondary school setting. The search for comfort in the counselling relationship was a constant theme throughout all stages and was identified as the core concept of the model. Several implications for practice were identified and included: ( 1) the centrality of the personal counselling relationship to the school counsellor's role, (2) the conflict between supervisory roles and the development of a personal counselling relationship, (3) the advantages of a multifaceted role for school counsellors, (4) the role of counselling as an arena of comfort, (5) the importance of giving students a role in the design of counselling services, (6) the importance of a professional friendship in the counselling relationship, and (7) the importance of clearly articulated professional identities for school counsellors.