This paper addresses the issues associated with providing quality supervision for school counsellors. The variety of tasks that are required of school counsellors makes it essential that appropriate supervisory support is provided by the employer. Clinical supervision should be carried out by a counsellor who has training in supervision methods and techniques, as well as clinical experience in the tasks being supervised. Administrative supervision can be conducted by a member of the school administrative team. School counsellor competence can be developed in the workplace with the support of a colleague or supervisor until expertise develops.

It is accepted that supervision is a crucial part of the professional support for counsellors. Bernard and Goodyear (1992) suggest that supervision serves three basic and important purposes. First, supervision ensures that those entering the profession have appropriate fundamental skills, second, it enhances the functioning of counsellors, and finally, it ensures the quality of service to clients. The supervisor needs to be competent not only in the process of supervision and the specific issues within the educational setting, but also aware of the particular preference of style school counsellors have for supervision, which research has found tends to be quite directive (Usher & Borders, 1993).

Clinical supervision of counsellors is linked to accountable practice and the quality of service to clients. Despite this, there is a gap between the rhetoric of the literature and the practice of clinical supervision. This study, set in the context of the Queensland Department of Education, examined the perceptions of guidance officers and senior guidance officers about the clinical supervision provided for guidance officers by senior guidance officers in relation to their counselling practices. The findings echo concerns expressed in the literature that supervisors have received little training in supervision, and the provision of supervision outside of training settings is less than adequate.

The Internet has revolutionised communication around the globe, and Australia is no exception (Goodheart & Crawford, 1995). At this stage, only a few school guidance counsellors are fortunate enough to be able to “surf the Net”, although this is rapidly changing, with some Australian schools already connected and others about to join up shortly. The pace of change is rapid indeed, with developments like EdNA and OpenNet offering further possibilities. Those who do “get wired” will know just how deep a source of riches this can be. The purpose of this article is to outline some of the relevant discussion groups of interest to counsellors.

NSW School Counsellors were surveyed regarding their attitudes towards homosexuality and their experience and willingness to work with gay and lesbian students. Most counsellors showed low to moderate homonegativism, but 16.6% scored in the high range. Less knowledge, experience, and past training on homosexuality issues were significantly related to homonegativism, as was unwillingness to participate in future activities and workshops dealing with lesbian and gay students' issues. Many counsellors had a poor knowledge of existing support services. Counsellors who were willing to provide supportive services for gay and lesbian students expressed a need for resources, information kits and curriculum material, inservice training, executive support and a positive Departmental policy.

One of the impressions in the literature on children's social anxiety is that young (preadolescent) children are not socially anxious and that social anxiety begins to manifest itself at adolescence and then increases with age. However there seems to be little direct research evidence to substantiate this claim. A questionnaire to assess feared outcomes in children and adolescents was therefore administered to 1415 children between the ages of 6 and 16 years. The results showed that worry about social threat did not increase with age and the content of the feared social outcomes also remained relatively constant over the age span.

This study compared the effects on behavioural interactions and achievement of (a) cooperative learning in which members were trained to collaborate to facilitate each other's learning and (b) cooperative learning in which members were not trained but were merely told to help each other. One hundred and ninetytwo, Year 6 children participated in the study. Stratified random assignment occurred so that each four-person group consisted of one high-, two medium-, and one low-ability student. All groups were gender balanced. The children worked in their groups on the same social studies unit, three times a week for 12 weeks The results indicated that the children in the Trained groups were consistently more cooperative and helpful to each other, they used language which was more inclusive, and they gave more explanations to assist each other as they worked together. Furthermore, the children in the Trained groups achieved higher learning outcomes than their peers in the Untrained groups.

Research has demonstrated links between children's poor peer relations and various forms of child and adult psychosocial maladjustment. Social skills training programs have been developed to increase children's social competence and reduce the risk for later problems. The Sheidow Park Social Problem Solving Program is a curriculum based cognitive social skills training program, designed for Australian primary school children. The present research evaluated the effects of this program on a variety of dimensions of children's social competence. Subjects were Reception/Year 1 children in two classes of a South Australian suburban primary school. The teacher of one class implemented the social skills program, while the other class experienced no formal social skills intervention. The results indicated that the various measures of social competence employed were relatively independent of one another, supporting the need for a comprehensive range of measures in social skills training research. The Sheidow Park program demonstrated a significant effect on children's sense of social self-competence and the degree to which they perceived a variety of challenging social situations as difficult to deal with. However, the program had no effect on teacher and peer ratings of children's social competence or on children's satisfaction with their wider social network. The findings are explained within the context of attribution and cognitive dissonance theories, and the strengths and limitations of both the Sheidow Park program and the present research are discussed. Suggestions for future research and modifications to the program are made.

The purpose of this study was to document the school experience of adolescents (n = 20) with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and to identify ways in which they could be better assisted to cope with school. Only half the schools assisted students via organisational changes or individual programs. Parents and school liaison people were seen to be the most helpful and Principals and School Counsellors the least helpful. Impaired memory and concentration negatively affected school experience to a large degree. The results indicated five major needs for schools to address: (1) emotional support and validation, (2) development of individual educational programs to reduce work pressure, (3) administrative flexibility, (4) active maintenance of social involvement with peer group and extracurricular activities, and (5) practical help. These can be facilitated by the appointment of a ‘school liaison person’ to individually assist a student with CFS.

While for some young people family life is smooth sailing, for many others it is fraught with turbulence. In this study of secondary students in metropolitan Melbourne the major concerns of children in intact and separated families were compared. The study also compared how young people cope according to their family circumstances. The 238 young people who live in intact households reported fights with parents and happiness as their major concerns. The major concern of the 114 young people in separated households was lack of access to the non-residential parent.

The investigation utilised the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), an 80-item instrument developed and validated over a five-year period as an instrument to measure adolescent coping. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant variation in coping according to gender and a significant relationship between coping and family status. There were significant gender differences regardless of whether the families were intact or separated.

A small proportion of children and adolescents experience a debilitating level of social anxiety, known as social phobia. Initially, we consider the phenomenology and aetiology of social phobia in children and adolescents. A number of age-sensitive assessment instruments or tools are briefly considered: a diagnostic interview, self-report instruments, cognitive assessment and self-monitoring. We explore cognitive-behavioural strategies that have been found to be useful in the management of social phobia. Although there is much research support for the efficacy of cognitive-behavioural strategies for adults with social phobia, it is emphasized that controlled evaluations have yet to be undertaken with socially phobic youngsters.

Students who are truant from school are frequently referred to a guidance officer or school psychologist in the hope of improving their school attendance. This presents a difficult task as little is known about the effectiveness of counselling with such students. This paper reviews the literature to identify reasons for truancy and to suggest some ways in which this knowledge may be of assistance in developing appropriate counselling strategies. This paper is concerned with truanting students of compulsory high school age. A definition of the various types of truancy is presented and a number of possible causes are identified. Two concepts which offer possibilities for developing counselling strategies with truanting students are discussed. These are, firstly, the feeling of alienation and disaffection from school experienced by many truants and, secondly, the individual psychology theory of Psychological Reversals proposed by Apter (1982).

This article discusses two recent projects concerned with the problem of eating disorders and their prevention: One, an initiative of the NSW Department of School Education, examined the possibilities for prevention in schools. The other, the author's doctoral research on recovery from anorexia nervosa, explored the ways in which recovery takes place. Both took as their starting point the social aspects of eating disorders. The article discusses existing models of prevention. It outlines the aims, methods and findings of the NSW project, including what was discovered about students' self-image and attitudes to their bodies, the sources of information available to them concerning the problem, its relation to competitive sport, and the anxieties about it which were expressed by teachers and parents. It is argued that a study of recovery can make a strong contribution to preventive strategies. Participants in the second project, spoke of their own recovery as a rediscovery of meaning in their lives through access to ‘myths’ and ‘rituals’. This finding is explained in both sociological and recent scientific terms. The author concludes that an understanding of the factors present in recovery from an eating disorder can provide a blueprint for prevention.

Adoption as a social phenomenon has always given rise to emotional controversy and the over-representation of adopted children at clinics and mental heath facilities has lead to studies which have focussed on the concept of psychological risk associated with adoption. Referral for assistance requires that counsellors and therapists appreciate the unique circumstances and vulnerabilities of adoptive families and are able to differentiate between normal transitional crises and adoption issues. To this end an overview of adoption concerns and, in particular, a developmental approach to adoption, is presented as a guide for those health professionals working with adoptive families.

Adoption has provided a fertile area of investigation into family attachment and functioning, and in particular the relative impact of nurture versus nature in human growth and development, although the secrecy surrounding adoption and the sensitivity of the process has created methodological problems and made it difficult to conduct representative large-scale studies. A re-occurring question has been whether the process of adoption itself is a stressor which predisposes adoptive families to psychological distress and maladjustment, and if so how does this manifest itself?