Counselling skills are a core component of social work. This book provides a theoretically informed understanding of the core skills required to provide counselling interventions that work.

Hilda Loughran is an Associate Professor in Social Work/Social Policy at University College Dublin. Before becoming a fulltime academic she worked as a social worker in housing, a social work addiction counsellor and a relationship counsellor. During her career she has maintained her counselling social work practice through voluntary work, mostly working with service users in the substance use field. She teaches Motivational Interviewing, Solution-Focused Work and Group work to Masters in Social Work students and is involved in participatory research with service users enhancing social work education.

List of figures; List of tables; List of exercises; Part I: Counselling skills for social work; Chapter 1: Social Work: Conversations, counselling and therapeutic interventions; Chapter 2: Talking and responding; Chapter 3 : Listening; Chapter 4: Thinking, processing and reflective practice; Chapter 5: Questioning; Chapter 6: Assessing and assessment; Chapter 7: Empathy, reflection and reflective responding; Chapter 8: Affirming, advising and motivating change; Part II: The application of counselling social work to methods; Chapter 9: Applying social work counselling skills in solution focused work (SFW); Chapter 10: Counselling social work skills and motivational interviewing (MI); Chapter 11: Applying counselling social work skills in groupwork; Appendices; Appendix 1: The social work tool kit, for summary of the three skills; Appendix 4.1 Listening, thinking to inform your response; Appendix 4.2 Reflection exercise using two axis tool; Appendix 4.3 Reflection exercise using two axis tool to explore your thinking about 'Childhood Obesity'; Appendix 4.4 Thinking filters as a framework for reflection: before, in and on action; Appendix 5.1 Checking out open questions, closed questions and reflective responses; Appendix 7.1: Empathetic Observation; Appendix 9.1: Case example: Jack; Appendix 9.2 Edited example of case: Jack; Bibliography