Unmasking Neurodivergence and Ethnicity Using Digital Tools - Giving Feedback to Your Tutors

In Episode 306 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly take us through this week's three topics:

Firstly in 'Ethical, Sustainable Practice', we look at recognising suicide risk in your therapy clients.

Then in 'Practice Matters', Rory speaks with Lesley Simpson-Gray about unmasking neurodivergence and ethnicity using digital tools.

And lastly in 'Student Services', Rory and Ken talk about how to give feedback to your tutors.

Recognising Suicide Risk in Therapy Clients [starts at 03:41 mins]

Supporting a client who is at risk of taking their own life can be very challenging as a counsellor. In this section, Rory and Ken discuss some ways of recognising if your client is high risk, and the steps you can take to prepare for this:

It's time to make a shift away from prediction-based risk assessment and towards an emphasis on therapeutic engagement.

We should be aiming to engage with these clients who may be thinking of taking their own life and working on it within the therapeutic relationship.

This is a subject that requires continuous CPD.

Risk assessments can be very useful - but they're not foolproof.

To recognise suicide risk in your therapy clients, you need to be thinking about the dynamic nature of a client and how this might present.

Detecting suicidality requires holistic evaluation, detailed enquiry, and checking context.

This is a subject with a lot of personalisation - it could present itself differently in different clients.

Neurodivergent clients could be at a higher risk.

Do you need to break confidentiality? Can you take a collaborative approach with an involvement of support systems around the individual?

To help yourself recognise suicide risk in your therapy clients, make sure you're doing the training around this subject.

Unmasking Neurodivergence and Ethnicity Using Digital Tools [starts at 19:09 mins]

In this week's 'Practice Matters', Rory speaks with Lesley Simpson-Gray about unmasking neurodivergence and ethnicity using digital tools such as video games.

The main points of this discussion include:

There are so many layers to identity.

People have different ethnic experiences and that shape their perception of the world.

This can also change how mental health is viewed.

Neurodivergence is yet another layer to identity - some difference may be seen as threatening to those less accepting.

Learning difficulties can often be dismissed as behavioural issues.

Video games can be used as a way for the autistic community to practice social skills and have a space that sometimes feels safer than the real world in terms of social relationships.

Finding characters they can relate to, and gaining power through that.

Allowing them to be themselves in a way that helps people to see it and accept them.

Tools for communication and figuring out identity.

A co-created environment to allow the client to feel comfortable and invite you into that space.

Giving Feedback to Your Tutors [starts at 44:04 mins]

It's common to receive feedback from your tutor, but sometimes you get the opportunity to give them feedback - and you should use it! In this section, Rory and Ken discuss how to give helpful feedback, particularly to your tutor:

Giving honest feedback can require us to have courage and be congruent.

Feedback should never be given with the intention to hurt someone - it should be aiming to help.

There can be an element of power imbalance in tutor-student relationships, but giving feedback can help to rebalance this slightly.

Useful feedback offers suggestions for improvement.

Try to think of a positive, then state what your challenge/struggle was, and then say what could have made that better for you - what works, what doesn't, how can that improve?