Volume_5_Issue_2_Digest

14 TPC Digest Counseling children with special needs can be challenging for professional counselors, particularly when working with children with chronic illness. Professional counselors working with children with special needs should have a basic understanding of the specific chronic condition and how the progression of the illness affects the child’s emotional state. Moreover, exposure to long-term therapeutic relationships with chronically ill children and witnessing failing treatment modalities can contribute to burnout, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma in counselors, highlighting the need for targeted literature addressing holistic self-care strategies. With a paucity of counseling literature on working with children with cystic fibrosis (CF), this manuscript provides a review of literature that can be used as a primer for counselors working with this special-needs population. To start, this manuscript centers on the unique physiological and psychosocial challenges that affect children with CF and their families. CF is a progressive, chronic and terminal disease that affects approximately 30,000 children and adults in the United States. Children with this diagnosis experience frequent hospitalizations, spend several hours per day on medical treatments to improve lung function, and often experience comorbid physical and psychological challenges that may impede childhood growth and development. Treatment during end-stage CF is palliative rather than curative, and without lung transplantation, CF remains a fatal disease. Due to the progressive and deteriorating nature of the illness, long-term contact with clients, and discouraging prognosis, counselors are more prone to burnout, vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue. After reviewing pertinent physical and emotional challenges facing children with CF, we provide targeted strategies that counselors can use when working with this special population. These strategies and suggestions are focused on empowering the child and working as an effective collaborator with the entire treatment team, family and parents. Specific ways in which professional counselors can alter counseling sessions to be sensitive to the medical traumas experienced by children with CF are provided. Finally, this article provides self-care strategies for professional counselors working with children and families affected by CF. Due to compassion fatigue when working with children with chronic and terminal illnesses, professional counselors are called to utilize self-care strategies and be mindful of symptoms of impairment. We provide a multidimensional and holistic synopsis of self-care strategies that target the physiological, cognitive and spiritual areas of wellness in order to prevent burnout among counselors working with the CF population. Cassandra A. Storlie, NCC is an Assistant Professor at Kent State University. Eric R. Baltrinic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo. Correspondence may be addressed to: Cassandra Storlie, 310 White Hall, PO Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242, cstorlie@kent.edu. Read full article and references: Storlie, C. A., & Baltrinic, E. R. (2015). Counseling children with cystic fibrosis: Recommendations for practice and counselor self-care. The Professional Counselor , 5 , 293– 303. doi: 10.15241/cas.5.2.293 Cassandra A. Storlie, Eric R. Baltrinic Counseling Children With Cystic Fibrosis Recommendations for Practice and Counselor Self-Care