Community Service Worker

How Students in Community Service Worker Training Can Develop Counselling Skills

June 02, 2020

csw course

Helping others rebuild their lives and regain confidence in themselves is one of the most important aspects of community service work, but it’s worth remembering that doing so successfully involves having certain skills under your belt. Honing these skills will help you to foster a positive transformation for both your clients and yourself as a community service worker.

Community service worker training can lead to several different kinds of job opportunities, such as a community support worker, rehabilitation care worker, or intake worker, which all involve some level of counselling abilities, while there are also a number of career paths more specifically focused on the counselling realm. Here’s how CSW students can learn to be better counsellors.

Becoming a Better Listener Through Community Service Worker Training

Being a good listener is arguably one of the biggest pillars of doing your job successfully as a community service worker. Therefore, the importance of being the best you can be at actively listening to others cannot be understated.

 

 

community service worker training
It’s important to be empathetic and a good, active listener

As a community service worker, you will not only need to pay attention to what clients are saying, but how they’re saying it, and what the context behind what they’re saying is. You will also need to develop an understanding of body language and what it means with regards to specific clients and their situations.

CSWs Learn to Be Present With Clients and Avoid Judgment

Forming relationships with clients after your community service worker trainingrequires a lot of empathy.You will need to remain patient and calm, even in stressful and surprising situations, and also avoid being judgmental. The last thing clients will want is to feel like they’re being judged, as they are looking to you as a safe haven to express their feelings about complex and sometimes uncomfortable circumstances.

The best way to do this is to be present with them, paying full attention to what they have to say, but also maintaining full awareness of your own thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. This can help you become more empathetic to those from other walks of life, and more easily able to help them with their issues, no matter how difficult their stories may be.

 

 

community service worker course
Learning to be present with clients can help you fully understand their situation

 

CSWs Are Constantly Learning to Be Better Counselors

It goes without saying that no one knows everything, or can genuinely claim to have mastered every single aspect of a profession without the need for further personal development. Whether it’s learning to be more self-aware, or learning to be a better listener, or asking better questions to clients, there are plenty of areas where you will grow and improve as you gain experience in community service work.

And while a CSW course will equip you with plenty of knowledge and skills, you can never stop learning about the craft or about your personal capabilities. You can read books, studies, and articles, attend workshops and conferences, take further classes for personal interest — whatever works best for you. Maintain a commitment to regularly finding new ways to develop as a community service worker or counselor, otherwise it can risk hindering your skills.

Want to take a community service worker course?

Contact Medix College to learn more!

Visit Our Blog Directory