TPC-Journal-V6-Issue2

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 2 181 in narrative form, incorporating direct quotes and paraphrased summaries from interview data, but structured around the corresponding factor arrays. Results Factor 1: Focus on Clients For participants on the focus on clients factor, the most important advocacy behavior was to “identify client strengths and resources” (see Table 1). When speaking about this item, participants often discussed teaching clients self-advocacy skills, stating that this is a key way in which career counselors promote social justice. Identifying client strengths and resources was referred to as “the starting point,” “the bottom line” and even the very “definition of career counseling.” One participant said that counseling is about “empowering our clients or jobseekers, whatever we call them, to do advocacy on their own behalf and to tell their story.” In general, persons on this factor were most concerned with empowering individual clients; for example, “I would say, even when we’re doing group counseling and family counseling, ultimately it’s about helping the person in the one-to-one.” Similarly, one participant said, “Instead of fighting for the group in legislation or out in the community, I’m working with each individual to help them better advocate for themselves.” Interview data indicated that social justice was a strongly held value for persons on this factor, but they typically emphasized the need for balancing their views on social injustice with their clients’ objectives; they wanted to take care not to prioritize their own agendas over those of their clients. Several participants on this factor perceived items related to legislation or policy change as among the least client-centered behaviors and therefore as the more unimportant advocacy behaviors in their career counseling work. Persons on this factor stated that advocacy at the systems level was neither a strength of theirs nor a preference. A few reported that there are other people in their offices or campuses whose job is to focus on policy or legislative change. There also was a level of skepticism about counselors’ power to influence social change. In regard to influencing legislative change in support of clients, one participant said, “I don’t think in my lifetime that is going to happen. Maybe someday it will. I’m just thinking about market change right now instead of legislative change.” Interview data revealed that career counselors on this factor thought about advocacy in terms of leadership, both positively and negatively. One person felt that a lack of leadership was a barrier to career counselors doing more advocacy work. Another person indicated that leaders were the ones who publicly called for social change and that this was neither his personality nor approach to making change, preferring instead to act at the micro level. Finally, persons on this factor expressed that conversations about social change or social justice were seen as potentially divisive in their work settings. One White participant said the following: There is a reluctance to do social justice work because—and it’s mostly White people— people really don’t understand what it means, or feel like they don’t have a right to do that, or feel like they might be overstepping. Talking about race or anything else, people are really nervous and they don’t want to offend or say something that might be wrong, so as a result they just don’t engage on that level or on that topic. Factor 2: Focus on Multiple Roles One distinguishing feature of the focus on multiple roles factor was the relatively high importance placed on using multiple sources of intervention (see Table 1). Participants described this as being all- encompassing of what a career counselor does and reflective of the multiple roles a career counselor