On-campus counseling center to aid community residents

The Greencastle Exchange Club Middle School Student of the Month is Jenna Lehman, shown here with her parents, Luria and Brad Lehman, and Exchange Club member Karen Showalter of F & M Trust and Jenna's teacher Terri Young.

A new community counseling clinic on Shippensburg University's campus provides needed services to area residents and offers graduates students a chance to get practical experience they need to graduate.

The community counseling center in Shippen Hall is providing free counseling for individuals and families, according to Dr. Bill J. McHenry, assistant professor of counseling and college student personnel and clinic director.

The center is the only one of its type offered on a campus of one of the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. It is based on similar college or university centers nationwide, but includes a connection with the graduate students' coursework that makes it unique, McHenry said.

"This area has excellent counselors and agencies but for some there's a waiting list of 2, 3 or 4 months," McHenry said. "This will give us the ability to ease some of that burden."

The graduate students who will provide the service are near the end of their coursework in counseling and are participating in the final phase, the clinical field experience segment, of their degree requirements. Students now complete that requirement through service with various agencies within the region.

Each student will be supervised by a faculty member and all counseling sessions, each 50 minutes long, will be held at a time when a faculty member can be nearby. Faculty will not be in the sessions but will meet with students after to discuss the sessions.

When an individual or family requests service, McHenry said, he will conduct an initial intake session to determine the scope of the issue, to assess whether the center can provide service and assign it to a student. He will also discuss informed consent, confidentiality and the requirement that all sessions be taped. Taping is mandatory, he said, based on the department's accreditation standards. The tapes will be used by faculty in supervision of the students, for clinical training and for some limited use anonymously in classes.

While the center will provide services for a range of issues, there are limitations. It will not deal with cases relating to neglect and abuse, severe mental illness, and severe drug and alcohol issues. In those cases, he said, those individuals would be referred to other area agencies. "It will be on a case-by-case basis so we'll look at all the variables and in some cases it could be beyond what we can offer. If the person is not a good fit for our services, we have the referral option. With all of our previous work, we have a vast referral network and lots of contacts for people who need other help," he said.

Once a client is accepted, the student will do a secondary intake to gain additional information for their use and set a mutually agreeable meeting schedule. Sessions will occur only during the regular fall and spring academic semesters. The goal, McHenry said, is to work with the clients to establish goals, look for outcomes and eventually end the sessions when they successfully worked through the issues.

Because some of the clients may need longer term assistance than can be offered by a student during a regular academic semester, those individuals or families may be transferred to a new student or referred to a different agency for continuity of service and continuum of care.

Next fall, he said, they hope to have two students serve their internships with the center that will provide service to about 20 clients. He said the center can handle about 30 total clients. That number will increase next fall when they offer group sessions on grieving and loss in conjunction with the Drew Michael Taylor Foundation.

More information is available by calling McHenry at 477- 1673.