Seeing potential, not disability

Disabilities can alter a person’s life, but rehabilitation counselors work hard to put clients back in the driver’s seat.

By Lynne Shallcross

When Chad Betters wants his students to grasp what it means to have a disability, he shares the story of a former client. The woman had been a nurse for 19 years but developed an allergy to latex as a result of her work.

“By developing this condition, the client not only had to adapt vocationally, given that she could not safely work in any health care environment due to the utilization of latex in many of the medical supplies present, but also had to make drastic changes in her life, including modifying her home, her vehicle and even her wardrobe due to the presence of latex components. She also had to learn to be mindful of her environment when out in public because sitting in a restaurant with balloons in the vicinity could trigger allergic symptoms,” says Betters, an assistant professor of rehabilitation counseling at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.

After working with Betters, the client was admitted into a legal training program and found work as a paralegal. She had learned how to manage her disability and became an advocate for health care professionals with latex allergies. “It’s a story I share with my students, and it tends to open their eyes to the magnitude of the impact of a disability,” Betters says.

Rehabilitation counseling is a well-established but sometimes misunderstood part of the counseling profession. “Everyone assumes we’re substance abuse counselors,” says Betters, a member of the American Counseling Association and the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association, a division of ACA. “And while we work with individuals with substance abuse issues because [they are] a disability, we work with all disabilities across the board.”

Carolyn Rollins, associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership at Albany State University in Georgia, has also heard the assumption that rehabilitation counselors focus on one specific area, such as substance abuse. But disability comes in a variety of forms, says Rollins, who is a past president of ARCA.

For example, she says, a rehabilitation counselor might help a student with a disability to get the accommodation he or she needs, whether that means taking a test in a quiet environment or using a computer with voice capabilities. The counselor’s role, Rollins explains, is to take a physician’s or other evaluator’s recommendation of what accommodation is necessary and to assist the school or other institution in implementing that accommodation for the client.

According to the ARCA scope of practice, “Rehabilitation counseling is a systematic process which assists persons with physical, mental, developmental, cognitive and emotional disabilities to achieve their personal, career and independent living goals in the most integrated settings possible through the application of the counseling process. The counseling process involves communication, goal setting and beneficial growth or change through self-advocacy, psychological, vocational, social and behavioral interventions.”

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Source: Counseling Today