Roles and Functions of

Counselors
“LET’S GO BACK”
1. Why is it important for counselors to know and
understand their personal values?
2. What is the essence of understanding that
each person is inherently good?
3. Why is it that effective counselors do not give
advice?
 As we determine complex problems in the
school, especially in this pandemic
times, the roles and functions of counselors
in educational institutions are tested
and challenged.
Their predefined roles and functions in the
educational system
makes their profession ever more needed
and recognized as they help and assist
our learners during these pandemic times.
Counseling in the Philippines

Counseling is a profession (R.A. 9258

also known as the Guidance and
Counseling Act of 2004) that allows you
to help others manage their responses to
life’s challenges

(Cleofe et al.,2015)
 …a helping profession
is composed of
members “who are
especially trained and
licensed to perform a
unique and service for
fellow human beings”.

Gibson and Mitchell (2003)

COUNSELING

It is more just listening, its “active

listening”; its more emphatic, it’s
caring; the relationship of client and
therapist/counselor are guided by
rules and regulations (Code of
Ethics, R.A. 9258) so as to protect
not only the Counselors, but also the
rights of clients.

When counselors counsel, wounds are opened, feelings will be explored

and perception and growth will be secured as the counselor and
client journey to wellness and back to functionality in society (Corey, 2015).
School Counseling • The guidance counselors are
• increasing number of students considered important
whose parents that are members of the educational
overseas workers;
team.
• the better facilitation of
students’ learning by They provide assistance to
addressing their behavioral • students’ academic pursuit,
concerns;
• progress in knowledge and use • socio-economic need,
of technology in the classroom; • career plans
• and cultural diversity in the
• and moral development.
classrooms by having students
from either different regions in
the country or different
countries.
School Guidance Services
1. Individual Assessment
2. Individual Counseling
3. Group Counseling and Guidance
4. Career Assistance
5. Placements and Follow –Up
6. Referral
7. Consultation
8. Research
9. Evaluation and Accountability
10. Prevention
School Guidance Services
Individual Assessment
Seeks to identify the characteristics and
potential of every client ; promotes the
client’s self-understanding and assisting
counselors to understand the client better
School Guidance Services
Individual Counseling
Considers as the core activity through
which other activities become meaningful.
It is a client –centered process that
demand confidentiality. Relationship is
established between counselor and client.
School Guidance Services
Group Counseling and Guidance
Groups are means of providing
organized and planned assistance to
individuals for an array of needs.
Counselor provides assistance through
group counseling and group guidance.
School Guidance Services
Career Assistance
Counselors are called on to provide
career planning and adjustment
assistance to clients.
School Guidance Services
Placements and Follow –Up
A service of school counseling
programs with emphasis on educational
placements in course and programs.
School Guidance Services
Referral
It is the practice of helping the clients
find needed expert assistance that the
referring counselor cannot provide.
School Guidance Services
Consultation
It is the process of helping a client
through a third party or helping system
improve its service to its clientele.
School Guidance Services
Research
It is necessary to advance the
profession of counseling; it can provide
empirically based data relevant to the
ultimate goal of implementing effective
counseling.
School Guidance Services
Evaluation and Accountability
• Evaluation is a means of assessing
the effectiveness of counselor’s
activities.
• Accountability is an outgrowth of
demand that schools and other tax-
supported institutions be held
accountable for their actions.
School Guidance Services
Prevention
This includes promotion of mental
health through primary prevention using
a social – psychological perspective.
 FUNCTIONS
OF
COUNSELORS
 Functions of Counselors
Erford (2014)
emphasized that professional
school counselors do not take rigid
and static set of functions in the
educational system.
This means that professional
counselors perform their roles in a
continuous state of transformation
in response to the current
challenges.
Therefore, professional counselors function as follows:
1. Providers of individual and group
counseling services.
• School counselors take an active role in
counseling groups or individuals. In a school
setting, professional counselors are equipped
not only in helping individuals understand
themselves, but also in providing correct
evaluation of either behavioral or clinical
problems a student may have.
2. Developmental classroom guidance
specialists.
• Professional counselors also prepare lessons and
implement guidance instructions to students. These are
executed by developing clear and measurable
objectives to meet the needs of the students. To meet
these objectives, professional counselors deliver
talks, seminars, workshop, and other interesting
activities. Lastly, professional counselors improve
their programs and mode of instruction through
consistent feedback and evaluation.
3. Leaders and advocates of academic
success.
• Professional school counselors have an ethical responsibility of
promoting academic success by helping students identify barriers
affecting school performance.
• These barriers may be personal (example: living with an absentee or
separated parents); socio-emotional (ex. peer pressure); moral
dilemmas (ex. failing an exam or cheating to pass an exam), or
career-related barriers (ex. indecisiveness about a course in college).
Professional counselors guide the students by identifying strategies so
they can positively cope with these challenges and see these challenges
as opportunities for growth.
4. Career development specialists.
• Professional counselors also provide activities that will
prepare students for the demands and requirements of their
chosen profession. These activities include formal writing of
resumes, having proper responses to job interviews and
knowing appropriate clothing for job applications.
Furthermore, to ensure proper coping and success in the
workplace, professional counselors help students develop
essential basic skills such as effective communication,
creativity, decision-making, critical thinking, and work
ethics.
5. Agents of diversity and multiculturalism.
• Professional school counselors are trained to deal with and
address the needs of people from different cultural
backgrounds.
• For example, because of the ASEAN Integration foreign
students study in our country; counselors may provide
assistance to these foreign students through activities that
allow interaction with Filipino students, aimed at helping
them cope with their new environment. At the same time, the
counselor will also carry out a program for the Filipino
students, aimed at helping them demonstrate hospitality,
respect, and understanding for their foreign classmates.
6. Advocates of students with special needs and
students-at-risk.
• Professional counselors give attention to students with
special needs - the athletes, honor students, students
with absentee parents, those with learning disabilities
and other clinically diagnosed students. They are
special groups who need additional assistance to help
them cope better-by providing comprehensive
assessment programs to better understand and
address their special needs.
6. Advocates of students with special needs and
students-at-risk.
• For example, students with absentee parents might have
stronger needs-in comparison with students whose parents are
always around-for social and emotional support. With this, the
counselor may help them become engaged in extracurricular
activities or he or she could even organize a symposium that
will help them become more adjusted with their situation. With
professional counselors also concerned with the promotion of
mental health, they could also organize activities that will help
students understand depression, anxiety, phobia or addiction
7. Advocates of a safe school environment.
• Conflicts, which may lead to violence, happen in
some school communities. For instance, there are
issues on bullying-physical, verbal, cyber,
psychological, etc. nowadays.
• Hence, a comprehensive school counseling program
with intervention components such as school
bullying campaign and peer and mentoring can
address this issue.
8. School and community collaboration
specialists.
• To ensure student’s holistic development and success,
professional school counselors work in collaboration with the
other school authorities and with the parents of the students.
• For example, they cooperate with teachers to better assist
students with learning difficulties or behavioral problems. At
times, school counselors are tasked to prepare seminar to
facilitate teachers’ better understanding of the personality
dynamics of students. Though conferences, counselors
collaborate with the parents to best facilitate and promote
excellent academic performance of the students.
8. School and community collaboration
specialists.
• Finally, counselors also collaborate with the mental
health practitioners when a student needs referral.
For example, those with depression may experience
hormonal imbalance resulting in depressive moods.
To provide proper response to the circumstance, the
professional help of a psychiatrist or a clinical
psychologist is needed.
The roles and functions of counselors have an impact not only
in the developing and enriching policies in the institution, but
extends its reach to the community (barangays) and the
society.
Their important roles extend not only on the learner’s realm of
academic achievement, but also tackles the emotional
boundaries of the learner, as this also affect the holistic
development of the learner
Counselors are also allied with mental health practitioners
such as clinical psychologists and psychiatrists in assessing
the needs and problems of the learner. They are a great asset
in helping the counselor to efficiently help a learner succeed in
life.
Activity 1.1. Situational Analysis
Objective: Determine the Roles and Functions of a
counselor in given situations
Directions:
1. Identify what role and function is or not
portrayed in given situations.
2. Provide the role and functions for each given
situation. Provide explanation.
3. Answer the follow-up critical thinking
questions.
Situation 1
• Counselor Manabat only sees that students
who have financial capacity, deserve to go to
better schools. So he organizes career
orientation for students who are in middle
class. He organizes a different career
orientation for the others who cannot afford.
• Roles and Function: _____________________
Situation 2
• For Counselor Domingo, the LGBTQ+
community and students who have
multicultural backgrounds are all accepted
in a Catholic school. So, counselor Domingo
provided a seminar for all the incoming
grade 11 and 12 students in the school.
• Roles and Function:
_____________________
Situation 3
• The school is having a crisis of academic
performance for grades 11 and 12 students. Their
school is having a NAT next month. The principal
tapped the services of Guidance Counselor Morales
for the students’ improvement and development. Ms.
Morales requested a meeting of both the parents,
teachers and other related parties to discuss some
academic interventions and rehabilitation measures to
promote development of the learners.
• Roles and Function: _____________________
Critical Thinking Questions:
1. Do you think that when counselors
are also determining academic
success, it goes beyond their roles and
functions? Should it only be within the
expected boundaries of counseling?
Defend your answer.
 2. Is counseling strictly for
students who have behavioral
problems?
Should relationship problems in
school count as an aspect to
consider in counseling? Defend
your answer.
____________________________
 3. Why do you think
multiculturalism is a challenge
for counselors and educators
alike, especially in achieving
academic and career
orientation?
 4. Can you trust a
counselor especially
when discussing some of
your problems in your
family? Why? Why not?
Give your explanation.
__________________
 5. Why do you think
counseling should be a
professional one, given that
even teachers can also counsel
and give advice? Do you think
teachers are also
good counselors? Defend your
answer.
The Challenges of a Counselor
We cannot deny the role of guidance
Directions: Think
Click icon of some
to add instance
picture counselor as a valuable asset in helping
that you have personally the students grow and improve. In this
task, you are requested to write some of
encountered or if you will encounter the encounters that you have with the
your guidance counselor. You can counselor. It does not matter how many
present these observations through times, but it counts that every encounter
a semantic web. Write your answers that you have, you have felt his/her
important role and function.
on a separate sheet of paper.
POST TEST
Directions: Multiple Choice. Choose the letter of the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
1. Which of the following is a function of guidance counselor in the school?

A. Alan was rejected by the counselor because he was a Negro coming from the rural
area of Maguindanao. The guidance counselor only accepts Catholics with white and fair
complexion.

B. Mrs. Bautista is delivering a speech on multicultural acceptance in their Career Fair.

She emphasizes the value that everyone should be accepted based on their qualified
skills and capabilities as companies’ judge them to that extent.

C. Counselor Jona demanded an apology letter from the bullying student Mark. She also
filed expulsion of the student and even broadcasted in her twitter the misdeed of the
student. It is the school policy that bullying has no place in a civilized society.

D. Being cultural means that must adhere to our own culture. We must reject some
cultures that is not good in the society or impedes the development of the society.
Directions: Multiple Choice. Choose the letter of the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
2. School counselors take an active role in
counseling may it be one or more individuals in
the process.
A. Advocates of group and individual counseling.
B. Advocates of students with special needs
C. Advocates of safe environment.
D. Advocates of cultural action.
Directions: Multiple Choice. Choose the letter of the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
3. Which of the following does not belong to the group, with
regards to the functions of a counselor?
A. Rejecting a student with special needs and advising to
enroll into a school that focuses with special needs.
B. Provides a comprehensive school counseling program for
students who bully and have bullied.
C. Filing a police report for a student that have done sexual
harassment
D. Helping a student to apply for a job.
Directions: Multiple Choice. Choose the letter of the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
4. Counselors collaborate with mental health practitioners when a
student needs referral. The statement concludes that...
A. ...school officials also need help especially if they accept students
with learning disabilities.
B. ...counselors are helpless when it comes to behavioral problems of
the child and needs more specialized people in handling it.
C. ...the collaboration of both private and public sector defines no
boundaries, especially if we are addressing the needs of the student.
D. ...sometimes we do not tolerate incompetence and therefore we
allow specialized people in handling specialized problems.
Directions: Multiple Choice. Choose the letter of the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
5. Which of the following is an example of diversity and
multiculturalism in the list of the counselor?
A. Organization of Middle-Income Learners only Tutorial
Service
B. Singaporean School for the Gifted and Elite
C. Only Black People Movement
D. ASEAN Integration