The acquisition of counseling approaches, interventions, or techniques can be accomplished only partially through didactic examination. The content of counseling practice evolves from the counselor-client experiences that occur in counseling. The content, process, and practice of counseling permit counselors to develop skills that are focused on the client, but they also assist the counselor to gain self-insight. The counselor's role in this process is to help individuals explore decisions or resolve problems about career choice and career establishment. Counselors should have the ability to consult on curricula and to design and implement a comprehensive career development plan or model for their work setting.
Multicultural counseling starts with an awareness that clients come from diverse settings.
Counselors need to be able to create a climate of mutual trust and empathetic understanding in what is often called cross-cultural counseling. In cross-cultural counseling, the differences between the counselor and the client may lie in terms of age, sex, gender, ethnicity, educational experiences, physical or mental disabilities, religious convictions, and family experiences. Counselors need to understand that the closely related processes of counseling research and developments in the field are crucial to effecting significant improvement in counseling practice. The term client is used interchangeably to apply to children, adolescents, and adults. References American Psychiatric Association.