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  • Voices of the Voiceless: Person-centred approaches and people with learning difficulties

Voices of the Voiceless: Person-centred approaches and people with learning difficulties

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ISBN 978 1 898059 41 7 (2002)
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Voices of the Voiceless is an inspiring, passionate and comprehensive exploration that offers hope and encouragement to counsellors and practitioners working with people living with learning difficulties. Although the effects of learning difficulties and the effects of society's treatment of people with learning difficulties are lifelong and often severe, counselling and healing are possible. The author argues that even those people who have the most severe learning disabilities can benefit from counselling, and not simply from behaviour management or medication to manage and control them.

 

•Introduction
•Danny's story
•Dilemmas
•How long is a counselling session supposed to be anyway? May's and Paul's stories
•How often can you hear it? Hope's story
•Interview with Bethan Jess Oliver: dual roles
•'I just want to be normal' James's story
•'No one ever listens': Patrick's story
•Creative groupwork: towards self-advocacy. Vic Forrest
•Interview with Joyce Gardiner: Supporting people with severe learning disabilities living in the community
•Carpe Diem -- seizing the day: developing day opportunities for people with profound and complex learning and other disabilities Michael Farrell
The asexual myth
•'I want a sexual relationship': Nora's story
•'He's behaving inappropriately': the importance of the shed: Simon's story
•The Person-Centred challenge to 'challenging behaviour'
•Interview with Sara Watson: Supporting clients with challenging needs
•'Her outbursts are a danger to others': Rachael's story
•Interview with Carol Schaffer:The Person-Centred Approach with a family support group, for those with family members who have learning and/or physical disabilities
•'Attention-seeking': How to avoid really listening

Loss and bereavement
•'There's no need to take them to the funerals; they don't understand anyway'
•'She won't get out of bed at all': Keeley's story

Learning new languages
•Opening up to each new communication style
•Carl's story
•Interview with Marie Cradock: On dinosaurs and other animals
•'I'm angry': Christopher's story
•A voice for the voiceless: the joy of communication

The research study
•The experiences of person-centred counselling pracititioners with clients who have severe learning disabilities
•Responses to questionnaires
•The interviews: dilemmas and passion

It is a long time since I have been so deeply moved by a book. In many ways, Jan Hawkins has produced in this extraordinary volume a kind of touchstone against which those of us who are person-centred practitioners can gauge our own integrity and test out anew the sincerity of our commitment to the therapeutic approach which we profess to embrace. At the same time the book holds up a mirror to some of the more sinister aspects of our society and compels us to acknowledge the powerful forces which operate to ensure the rejection of those who through their physical or mental impairment are condemned to live half a life or worse … This book is a testimony to the glory of the human person, to the power of relationship and to the beauty of the person-centred approach which will not easily be refuted or surpassed. Professor Brian Thorne, University of East Anglia.

…well written, clear and filled with the voices of informants who offer a perspective rarely seen on the bookshelves – an insight into living and being someone who deals with the complexities of learning disabilities and the inability of others to understand the ways in which that experience is translated. Teena Clouston, Lecturer and Counsellor, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff.

Jan Hawkins

Jan Hawkins integrates 28 years experience of counselling and her 37 years’ experience as a mother of a person with learning difficulties into her book Voices of the Voiceless. Jan is a person-centred therapist, supervisor and trainer, and also has a private practice in London.

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Jan Hawkins