Volume 5 – Issue 3

The impact of sibling abuse on children and adolescents is rarely contemplated. Counselors are in a position to advocate for all children and protect them from harm; yet one source of harm that counseling practitioners and educators might be unaware of stems from violence between siblings, which can become abusive. In this article, findings are presented from a phenomenological study examining eight practicing school counselors’ attitudes and beliefs about sibling abuse and the contexts or situations that have influenced them. Seven themes emerged supporting school counselors’ perceptions of their role in responding to sibling abuse and their beliefs about factors contributing to sibling abuse. Recommendations for advocacy for children and adolescents are offered for counselor educators, counselors-in-training and counseling practitioners, school counselors in particular.

Ethnic and linguistic minorities continue to underutilize and prematurely terminate counseling services
at higher rates than their ethnic majority counterparts. To improve the provision of counseling services to
culturally diverse clients, new avenues supported by theory and research need to be uncovered. One factor
that has received little empirical attention in the counseling and multicultural literature is bilingualism.
This study examined the effect of bilingualism on counseling students’ multicultural counseling
competence, while controlling for ethnicity and multicultural training. Results supported the hypothesis
that bilingual counseling students would self-rate their multicultural counseling competence higher than
would their monolingual counterparts. Implications for counselor training, counseling practice and future
research are discussed.