Week 12 Blog

Discuss the complexity of working with clients who are also pregnant. How would a pregnancy change your approach to treatment? What issues might come up for you as a counselor? How might you talk about these risks with your client? How would you respond if your client continued to heavily drink or use substances while pregnant?

I think there are many complexities when working with a pregnant client. In a way, you are working with two individuals. The client’s use of substances has a direct impact on the unborn baby. Personally, I can see myself getting agitated if a pregnant client of mine continued to use. If I were working with a client who was pregnant and who used substances I would gather as much data as possible to present to the client. Maybe they do not know the risks? Maybe they don’t understand that their use of substances no only impacts them but also their baby?

For me, this is an area that I would have to seek extensive supervision due to my lack of experience. One point that is raised in the text is that pregnant women might deny or minimize their level of use. There are a couple of tools that counselors can use to try and get an accurate picture of the level of use. One is the T-ACE and one is the TWEAK. Both of these tools can be used as ways to get a real picture of what their use of substances is.

Another thing I am unclear about is the legality of substance abuse by a pregnant woman. If a mother gets her one-year-old high on crack or heroin, the baby will be taken away and she will suffer the legal consequences. What happens if a pregnant mother smokes crack or injects heroin?! Are there similar consequences? How is that handled? I always end up with more questions than answers after my posts but these help me to be more inquisitive and seek more answers.

 

What does it mean to you to advocate for clients and challenge bias? How do you feel about taking on that role? Is that a role you expected to take on as a counselor? Are there some groups for whom it would be harder or easier for you to advocate for? Does that reflect on your own beliefs and values? How so?

For me, it means working our best to identify our biases or ideas that we ourselves have and challenge them through education and experience. If we don’t know how we feel it is going to be very difficult for us to help those that are different from us. I personally enjoy challenging biases because I feel that it makes us grow. Some folks are very set in their ways, and by no means am I trying to change them or change their system of beliefs, but I feel that it is very important to inform so they can have a better idea of the people that surround them in our world as counselors. That way they can more informed decisions on their own feelings and emotions. There are a few groups of people I would have a hard time working with. First, sexual predators or sexual offenders. I don’t think, at this stage in my career, I would be able to work with them. I have very strong beliefs about individuals who sexual abuse/molest children so I would not be able to work with them in a professional setting. There have been times at my school where I have become aware of things that have happened between a parent and one of my students and I have to calm myself down quickly. It would be an exercise in self-control to remain professional should I come across one of these parents. At this point in my career, due to my lack of experience, I wouldn’t feel 100% comfortable working with addicted clients either. Being that I work in a school with adolescents, this is the population I feel most comfortable with. I also work with many staff members and parents so I also feel comfortable working with them when it has to do with their children. Working with a population other than that would, for me, take a few years of more experience with that population. 

 

Using the Blog References, find and specifically report on at minimum of four websites that you could use for information regarding gender and/or LGBT issues in addictions counseling. Give a minimum of one paragraph of explanation for each site listed.

http://www.algbtic.org/

The Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Issues in Counseling. This is a great site that provides an enormous amount of resources for counselors who work with LGBTQ clients. There is a tab on the upper right hand side of the page labeled ‘Resources.’ There is a tremendous amount of information under this tab that includes LGBTQ References and Resources, what it takes to be competent in this field, a therapist resource listing (although it seemed to be down when I looked at it), multicultural considerations, transgender considerations, and a page on safe schools.

The references and resources page alone has dozens of articles that are useful for counselors who work with this population. Although it was down, I am going to assume that they are working to fix the page where individuals can go to find therapists by state who are members of ALGBTIC. The Multicultural and Transgender pages under the Resources tab also have a very large amount of pages that individuals can visit to get support and information for working with this population of clients. Great page.

 

http://www.colage.org/

Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. This is a great site that aims to untie youth with one or more LGTBQ parent. I think this is great because as the numbers of LGBTQ adults who adopt children increase, the amount of services we have to be able to provide also needs to increase. We are going to see more and more youth who have at least one LGBTQ parent and they need our support.

There is a great resources tab on this site as well. Site users can explore a lot of information and get connected to others who have LGBTQ parents. There is also a section in Spanish, which I love! Another great part of this site that I spent some time reading through was their Kidsafe Blog. Here, youth blog about their current experience, their history, and their own personal stories. This is such an amazing site for our youth to be aware of. I am wondering how we, as professionals, can get the information about these sites out! I have a Safe Space kit that I ordered for my school last year, but I feel like we need to do more to get these kinds of sites out to our kids! I love this site.

 

http://glma.org/index.cfm?nodeid=1

Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. This is a site that has been put together by healthcare providers that have been working to ensure equality in healthcare for LGBT individuals for more than 30 years. On the front page, there is a News section that links up to assistance for LGBTQ individuals who are signing up for Obamacare. There are specific resources available for these individuals that this organization wants to be sure they are aware of. There is also a section that goes over exactly what this organization has been working on in the past and what legislation they have had a say in.

There is also a section under the resource where LGBTQ patients can find a health care provider who is a member of GLMA. There are also links to articles that go over the top 10 things that LGBTQ patients need to discuss with their healthcare providers. These lists go over some very important things that LGTBQ patients need to bring up with their doctor. Some of these topics are safe sex, STD screening information, substance abuse, and proper diet and exercise. These are topics that, while they seem common sense, could very well be overlooked by individuals. Very informative site.

 

http://www.thetaskforce.org/

 The Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This is a website that outlines the work that this organization does to advocate for the LGBTQ population. The Task Force is a great organization to put clients in touch with due to their grassroots work. Clients can immediately become involved and be part of a movement that works to build political power of the LGBT community. A large part of successful work done with LGBTQ clients is putting them in touch with a community that they can use for support. This is a very large community and the members can actually work together as agents of change. The issues they work on are very expansive so our clients will surely be able to find an issue to get behind whether it is campus life, faith, hate crimes, or parenting and family. This is a great site to direct our clients to.

• What were your attitudes toward use of substances when you were a child and an adolescent?

My parents never really drank too much but they would have wine during the holidays or a beer during the game. When I was growing up I knew that my mother smoked cigarettes. I can remember stealing them from my mom and going out and smoking them in the woods. I also remember picking up half-smoked cigs off the ground and smoking them with friends of mine. I remember getting in trouble in 9^th grade when a group of friends and I got caught smoking outside the school. In middle school and high school my friends and I used substances all the time. It was completely normal and became routine for us to do so. The older kids definitely did it so that was another reason we got into drugs.

• What was your personal and peer group experience of substance use? How are your views the same or different now? What might it feel like to work with clients making different choices, or to encourage choices that you did not make?

As mentioned earlier, my group of peers used all types of substances. We experimented with many things that I would obviously advise my clients against. I mean, I was young and had a hard time saying no. I try not to regret much because what we did in our past makes us who we are and we can’t change that! When working with clients who are using substances, at times I will be able to relate to them and help them find a way to stop using. Counselors always need to keep in mind what the appropriate amount of disclosure is, but I definitely think that our experiences help us offer our clients the best care possible.

• Who advised you about drugs and alcohol, and when? What was your response? What encouraged or discouraged use in the approaches you encountered? What do you hope to emulate or discard from your models?

I honestly don’t remember ever having the ‘talk’ with my parents. I think they just assumed that I would get it in school and left it up to them. I remember being in the DARE program in elementary school which, I believe, was in 5^th grade. I also remember being in health class in high school and having a cop come in with a briefcase full of drugs. At that point my friends and I were trying just about anything we could so I remember really being interested in what he had in there. As I got older I saw how substances really messed some of my friends’ lives up. That was a reality check for me and I was able to curb my use due to being freaked out that I would end up like them. Bottom line, as I mentioned before, I try not to regret things or else I would spend a lot of time thinking about all the mistakes I have made. I try, instead, to use my experiences to help me be the best I can be with what I do as a counselor, husband, sibling, and son.