Interview a helping professional, someone whose work focuses on providing emotional support and/or assisting people in changing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. Find out about the following:
1. Their training to be a helping professional (education for a degree, continuing education, on-the-job training)
2. The setting in which they do their work (e.g., private practice, community agency) – find out how they get clients, how the interact with other professionals, how they get paid
3. The types of clients and client problems they work with
4. Their approach to working with clients (theoretical orientation, techniques, modes [individual, family, group])
5. Share with them some things you’ve learned in this course (e.g., active listening, goal-setting) and find out to what extent it applies to their work
6. Something they wish they had known about helping people when they started doing this type of work OR something they learned about helping people through their experience
Write a paper that situates the helping professional within the literature on helping. In this paper you will draw on the interview you conducted, as well as 5-8 journal articles, books, or book chapters (not dissertations). You should select literature that provides context for what the professional has told you about her or his work. For example, you might find research articles about the type of setting, type of clients, or modes of helping; or you might find book chapters about the theoretical orientation. You should integrate the literature into your description of the helping professional.