CHAPTER II Current Status of Counseling with Deaf People McCAY VERNON Improved, yet primitive, best describes the current status of counseling in the field of deafness. Services have expanded over the last decade and new training programs have been developed (Jones, 1970; Sussman, 1970; Switzer and Williams, 1967). Yet, the overwhelming majority of deaf people still go through life totally unable to obtain any form of professional-level counseling. The situation is best understood if examined as it relates to specific realms and periods of the deaf person's life. Counseling for Young Deaf Children's Parents When a family first discovers it has a deaf child the reaction is generally traumatic. Grief, guilt, and overwhelming helplessness are normal responses. These feelings and the accompanying anxiety leave parents desperate for help and highly vulnerable to anyone who offers direction, regardless of how inappropriate it may be. Effective counseling at this crucial time would enable parents to work through their feelings and direct their efforts and anxieties toward constructive endeavors for the deaf child. Unfortunately, instead of professional help toward these ends, parents are generally exposed to the well-intended but often misguided counsel of speech therapists, educators, physicians, and audiologists whose competence and training is often excellent in their respective fields but not in the field of counseling. As a consequence parental needs to deny their child's deafness are reinforced (Grinker, 1969; Mindel, 1968; Vernon, 1969a; Vernon and Mindel, 1971). Hearing aids and speech lessons are offered as the major solutions to the parents' problem in coping with deafness 30 CURRENT STATUS OF COUNSELING WITH Deaf People 31 when, in fact, these are ancillary to the important tasks of psychologically working through the mourning of the child's hearing loss and of establishing very early communication through the language of signs and fingerspelling used in conjunction with speech, amplification, lipreading, and writing (Mindel and Vernon, 1971). It is the lack of appropriate parent counseling at this crucial time, when deafness in the child is first discovered, that lays the groundwork for much of the later family pathology and related difficulties faced by parents and their deaf child (Sussman, 1970). Deaf youth frequently grow up unable to exchange with their own parents and siblings basic information about religion, human interaction, sex, work, and family life simply because of the absence of effective early parent counseling and resulting poor communication. The frustration and tension that this deprivation of communication introduces accounts in part for the high divorce rate among parents of deaf children and for the frequent appalling lack of closeness between deaf youth and their parents and siblings. The frequent vocational and educational difficulties that follow in adulthood are often a direct outgrowth of these early difficulties that could have been avoided with proper parental counseling. The total failure of colleges and universities to prepare professionals for this counseling responsibility, in the face of the desperate need parents have, has obviously resulted in a counseling vacuum. It is currently being filled by almost anyone in the speech and hearing clinic, school, or doctor's office upon whom the task falls by default. The deplorable results alluded to above, but beyond the scope of this chapter to fully explain, are the usual consequences. If the major psychological, educational, and vocational problems of deafness are to be met at the preventive, not the rehabilitative level, professional parent counseling is absolutely essential. At present it does not exist and there are no planned programs to prepare such counselors. The only training available is semiprofessional at best. It generally consists of indoctrinating teachers, speech therapists, audiologists, etc., to convince parents to use and support an "oral only" treatment of deafness which, though well intended, includes so much frustration and failure that it is in actuality often anti-therapeutic. Counseling in Elementary and Secondary Schools Public day schools and classes, with few exceptions, offer deaf youth nothing that could even euphemistically be termed professional counseling. Persons with the title counselor may do some class scheduling with deaf 32 COUNSELING WITH DEAF PEOPLE students and talk with parents if discipline problems arise. However, almost none of these people are specifically prepared to understand the implications of profound hearing loss. Most cannot communicate in sign language, a prerequisite to counseling most deaf youth. In addition, they usually have only one or a few deaf students as part of a huge general case load. The situation is sufficiently deplorable. Not only does the deaf youth have no one to come to with problems, but he cannot even obtain basic information about the programs available to him for postsecondary academic and vocational/technical education. The college, junior college, trade school, and evaluation and work orientation facilities created specifically for deaf youth are widely under-utilized, while hundreds of youth in need of them are unaware of their existence. The primary reason is the absence of even rudimentary counseling geared to young deaf people. Obviously, if the deaf youth in day schools and classes and regular public schools cannot even get basic information about services available to him because of a lack of informed counselors who can communicate with him, he has no hope of receiving counseling regarding personal problems, career planning, etc. (Sussman, 1970). In contrast to the day school situation, many residential schools have a psychologist and/or psychometrist, a social worker, or a counselor. However, the primary duties of these staff members usually involve diagnostics, intake, or administration, not actual personal or group counseling. Residence hall staff generally lack any professional preparation in counseling. Some of them have sensitivity to young people's needs and can function in a highly therapeutic manner. Unfortunately, such sensitive persons are in the minority. In many schools, residence hall counselors are unable or forbidden to use sign language, which precludes adequate counseling even if the staff were competent to provide it. Residential school faculties are usually aware of most of the postsecondary opportunities available to deaf school leavers and inform the students and families about them. However, some schools advocating only oral education, especially the private ones, may often not tell the graduate or his family about specialized programs for deaf persons because of the school's desire to have the student matriculate in a facility with hearing students. From the above, it is clear that there is a need for qualified counselors in the elementary and secondary schools of the nation, which now have some 40,000 deaf children. Whether or not administrators are willing to establish counseling positions and employ such people is another matter. CURRENT STATUS OF COUNSELING WITH DEAF PEOPLE 33 Certain progressive residential schools already have, and a trend toward enlightenment along this line seems a reasonable expectation. Counseling in Postsecondary Programs Some years ago, in the way of a major research and demonstration project, Gallaudet College established a counseling center which, plagued by many problems and possibly naïvete about deafness, was subsequently abandoned. Major reasons for the failure were that psychologists employed did not communicate adequately with deaf students; some did not master the sign language or consider it essential in counseling work with deaf students; and there seemed to be some confusion over whether the role of the center was counseling or tutorial. Recently, counseling services have been reinitiated at Gallaudet. The National Technical Institute for the Deaf has developed personal, academic, and vocational counseling services for its deaf students. In the four-year program for deaf students at San Fernando Valley State College, and in most of the junior college programs, there is emphasis on counseling but the unavailability of professionally qualified counselors makes the goal difficult to achieve. These facilities, nonetheless, do recognize the need and do make strong efforts to provide counseling. Special facilities such as the Hot Springs Rehabilitation Center for severely disabled persons and workshops and evaluation centers for deaf clients are also cognizant of the need for counseling. They too face the problem of finding qualified people. Counseling in Integrated Educational Facilities The deaf person who goes to a regular college, high school, or vocational training facility for the hearing is likely to receive no counseling at all. Ironically, he is the individual in the most stressful environment. Unless there is some centralization of deaf persons in a relatively few institutions, and unless the caliber of counseling available from the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation improves, it is obviously not feasible to provide them specialized counseling. Counseling in Vocational Rehabilitation Most deaf persons, by virtue of their handicap, are eligible for state rehabilitation services that include counseling. For many years the persons dispensing these services had no training as counselors and little, if any, experience with deafness. Hence, it was primarily bright deaf clients who 34 COUNSELING WITH DEAF PEOPLE knew what they wanted and who knew their rights who got financial support for training. Others frequently were given job placement in laundries, assembly lines, or similar menial tasks unless they had learned a trade in a residential school. In these cases a few were given assistance in placement (Lunde and Bigman, 1959). Today the educational level and professional competence of counselors are rising. Table 1 shows that of the 132 who were devoting at least onefourth of their time to deaf clients some 35 percent held graduate degrees and 85 percent had at least a bachelor's degree. Approximately 13 percent held graduate degrees in rehabilitation counseling (Tully, 1970). TABLE 1 Highest Degree Held by Vocational Rehabilitation Reprinted by permission of Dr. Norman Tully (see references). These figures represent tremendous improvements over the past and a significant dividend from the graduate counseling programs sponsored by the Rehabilitation Services Administration. While they give encouragement for the future they must be evaluated against a background of some hard facts. First, the majority of deaf clients are not seen by these 132 counselors who serve primarily in urban areas or in specialized facilities. Most deaf people who get any service at all are seen by general counselors who are unlikely to have any knowledge or experiences with deafness. Obviously they do not know manual communication, which is a basic prerequisite to counseling a deaf client. For that matter only one-third of the 132 counselors (18 percent of whom are themselves deaf or hard of hearing) specializing in deaf clients are good in manual communication (Table 2). |