WHAT WORKS? : AN ANALYSIS OF HELPING SKILLS IN WORKING WITH DRUG ABUSERS

Abstract

The effectiveness of 2 groups of helping skills (skills that help manage client feelings and problems) were studied using a pretest-posttest control group design. Subjects (N=50 male drug abusers from one DRC) were pretested on their ratings of their counsellors' helpfulness and relationship with them; their counsellors given training on the use of the 2 groups of skills; and subjects were posttested to determine if their ratings of their counsellors' helpfulness and relationship with them improved after their counsellors have gone through training. A control group of 50 male drug abusers from two other DRCs were pretested and posttested on the Helpfulness and Relationship variables during the same time interval of 6 weeks. The difference between the control and experimental groups is that counsellors of the control group did not go through the training provided and made minimal use of the 2 groups of helping skills of interest in this study. T-tests show that the experimental group's rating on Relationship was significantly higher than that of the control group, but on Helpfulness, the ratings of both experimental and control groups did not differ significantly. The training programme for counsellors on the use of skills that help manage client feelings and problems was considered successful in increasing the counsellors' skill utilization, but while the use of these skills improved the counsellor-client relatioship, increasing counsellor's helpfulness may take further effort. Multiple regression analysis reveals that the best predictors of Relationship included skills like clarifying role and purpose, reaching inside of client silences, and putting client's feelings into words; while the best predictors of Helpfulness were encouraging client feedback and checking for artificial consensus.