Lay Community Counsellor - Creating Lay Community Counsellors

Creating Lay Community Counsellors

Keeping in mind the situational limitations ADEPT's goals of creating Lay Community Counselors were:

• To train local volunteer lay community counselors in immediate crisis response and basics of trauma counseling.
• To help the community counselors to support survivors in their efforts to respond to the effects of Tsunami.
• To assist the counselors plan their activities in the aftermath of the tsunami.

The participants were trained in the psychological effects of disasters, and simple guidelines with sample techniques to handle them, including vignettes and an assignment to design sample action plans targeting different situations. Training methodology was short interactive lectures combined with interactive group work and participatory plenary sessions. Training duration was three days. The entire training was conducted in the vernacular using simple language and avoiding technical terms and jargon.

The design of the program included the preparation of the training module, identification of the target group, planning duration of the training and its methodology and post training professional support. The module was formulated for purposes of exigency and the material adapted from several open source documents.

The training team included a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a trained counselor.

The participants of the program were several members associated with the local communities, and grass root level leaders, especially those who have already been providing supportive service to the affected community prior to the tsunami such as:

• Village Health Nurses and Health Inspectors
• Teachers
• Self Help Group members
• Youth Leaders
• Leaders of faith based organizations
• Community leaders
• Disaster Response workers

The expected outcomes of the training included basic skills of counseling such as the capacity:

• To understand reactions to trauma,
• To listen and help survivors to ventilate
• To help survivors find privacy for the expression of emotions
• To support survivors in their efforts to achieve a sense of emotional safety by reassuring them that their reactions are acceptable and not uncommon,
• To help survivors begin to take control of the events going on around them
• To assist survivors in handling the practical issues that will face them in the aftermath of the Tsunami.
• To identify survivors with severe psychological problems and refer them to qualified experts/professionals.

The training was designed for a three-day period to quickly equip the volunteer community counselors with the basic skills of counseling. Thereafter additional support and hand holding was provided through fortnightly follow up half-day sessions over a three-month period that was participatory and interactive.

The Community Counselors took the initiative to sit and talk with the survivors, listen to them and be a part of their loss; this was immensely helpful. The survivors needed someone to empathize with them and it was not always the monetary part that mattered. The community counselors provided counsel by:

• handling the bereaved through supportive interaction,
• handling the children through play, and interactive and creative activities such as enacting plays, composing poems, singing songs, dancing and music etc. with the themes of “goodness of nature”, “tsunami is transient”, “we shall overcome” etc.
• public education and awareness of the nature of the tsunami
• problem solving and supportive activities

Twice monthly follow up meetings showed that the training produces efficient and expeditious results. The referral pattern was good and it was observed that the community counselors developed culturally appropriate interventions that were effective and methodologically diverse for every group. These have been documented as case studies. The trained volunteer community counselors helped to provide structure and calm in the midst of the chaos in the aftermath of the tsunami.

The methods used among the adult population were case specific, innovative and adaptive such as:

• the ten-year-old boy who was brought out of his grief (for the six-year-old sister snatched from his hands by the tsunami) by being asked to mother a plant.
• systematic de-sensitisation of the fear of the sea by regular visits to the backwaters for a bath
• diverting attention from the tragedy by engaging the affected person in activity to restore normalcy to life.

The examples of cases referred to professionals were also indicative of the confidence of the community counselors – both in the counseling process and in realising their own limitations The design of the program and the associated advantages of the model were many including:

• Less dependence on experts
• Cost effectiveness
• Ensured local community participation
• Ready entry points with the additional benefits of shorter time frames, easier
• Identification of needs, easy rapport, and effective communication,
• Enhanced stature of the community counsellors in the affected communities due to their continued presence and participation in recovery and reconstruction activities.