This chapter discusses legal methods that noncitizens can use to enter and stay in the United States (US) for a long term. US immigration law sets out a variety of ways in which noncitizens can enter the country legally. When confronted with a noncitizen client, service providers may want to ascertain how the person first entered and what immigration status the person is in now, as a way to later determine a legal remedy. However, knowing the legal classification and method of entry will help the service provider in understanding the legal as well as social service needs and aid the provider in making referrals to immigration specialists as well as other places that could help with the client’s needs. For noncitizens entering the US who are already recognized as refugees, the service provider’s role is perhaps most relevant in providing mental health counseling.

This chapter explores vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout and the potential impact on professionals who treat victims of military sexual trauma (MST). Professionals who provide counseling to sexual trauma survivors will be affected by the exposure to the personal and, sometimes, graphic accounts of sexual victimization reported by their clients. Although brief exposure to extreme or shocking trauma material can have a significant impact on the helping professional, prolonged exposure to emotional pain and the explicit details of other people’s suffering can be more problematic. Psychologist Jacob Lindy pointed to this concern in his book on treating war veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Burnout was originally used in the 1970s by psychoanalyst Hebert Freundenberger in reference to occupational exhaustion. Burnout may involve psychological, physical, or behavioral symptoms in both personal and professional settings.

Professional competence refers to our ability to perform effectively within our professional role. As counselors, we are required to remain aware of our professional strengths and weaknesses and respond accordingly when counseling situations fall outside of our ability to be effective. Professional competence involves working with client populations for which we have been properly trained, maintaining training and education throughout our careers, and identifying and addressing personal experiences or internal problems that can affect our ability to be effective counselors. In this chapter, authors cover what it means to be professionally competent, how to recognize when we are exceeding boundaries of competence, and how to maintain competence throughout a professional career. Professional competence includes a host of complex situations and variables. Much of the research and writings on the topic of competence focuses on multicultural competence. Understanding individual differences in our client population is essential for maintaining professional competence.

The legal system relies heavily on jargon. This chapter discusses the terms and phrases most commonly used in family law. Few of the terms and phrases includes appeal, applicant, best interest of the child, case manager, case management directions, child’s representative, complainant and court order. The chapter also discusses the roles of counselors in family court and provides step-by-step guidelines on how to expand one’s counseling practice to include family forensic services. Depending on the state, a custody evaluator generally is a licensed physician who has board certification in psychiatry, a licensed psychologist, a licensed clinical social worker or licensed social worker in private practice, a licensed clinical professional counselor, or a licensed marriage and family therapist. Regardless of terminology, the custody evaluator is licensed at the highest tier of his or her profession. Mandatory mediation and joint custody were issues regularly considered in courts in many states.

This chapter discusses the roles of counselors in family court and provides step-by-step guidelines on how to expand one’s counseling practice to include family forensic services. It describes how to enter the field, build a successful practice, and how to work effectively with attorneys and judges as well as parents and children. The chapter provides specific guidelines and examples of how to communicate effectively with attorneys, conduct interviews with parents and children, make recommendations for custody and visitation, write reports, and successfully testify in court. Becoming a custody evaluator, mediator, or case manager is not for the faint of heart. But the challenge makes this work interesting and fulfilling. These jobs require that one use their counseling skills not as a therapist, but rather as an impartial advocate in the court system for a child and his or her best interest.

This chapter suggests that if one already holds a counseling degree and license, they will need to further educate themselves about the world of forensic counseling, specifically about being a custody evaluator, mediator, or case manager. One must go to professional workshops and conferences offering educational sessions in forensic counseling. Begin to establish relationships with counselors who are already working in the field. Hone their counseling skills by working with families and children of all ages. Try to receive supervision from a person who has many evaluations, mediations, or case management cases under his or her belt. Mediation is more like a business deal than the emotional interviews with the evaluator. A case manager is a professional who primarily does the job of a mediator or a custody evaluator but who also occasionally does the work of a case manager. Not many do the job of case manager exclusively.

Forensics relies on relationship- building, active listening, reflection, confrontation, hypothesis, and deduction. It uses all the skills of a professional counselor and then makes additional demands in the forms of relationships with clients, attorneys, and judges. Forensic counseling covers a broad spectrum: from counseling with juvenile delinquents and prisoners to working with pathologists, forensic examiners, and law enforcement officers. Forensics is the process of relating or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems. In other words, forensics uses knowledge to better understand facts and circumstances for the purpose of clarifying legal issues. This book discusses forensic area of child custody evaluations; other texts spotlight mental competency, profiling, personality assessments, and still more services often provided by mental health professionals to the courts. It is intended primarily for licensed professional counselors but can easily be understood and applied by practitioners in any of the other mental health professions.

This chapter discusses training and licensing requirements for custody evaluators and mediators, scope of practice, and ethical concerns. Functioning within the guidelines of an ethical code is what licensed professional practitioners do in their professional and personal lives. Working as a forensic counselor does not relieve one from also being an ethical counselor. However, some of the ethical considerations will be inherently different when working as an evaluator, mediator, or case manager. The code still guides one’s practice, but because of the public nature of legal cases, some things are different for a forensic counselor. Without confidentiality, no therapeutic relationship would exist. Counselors guard confidentiality in their practice. But for an evaluator, case manager, or mediator, the concept of confidentiality takes on a slightly different hue. The work of the forensic counselor is not considered confidential except for the work of mediators and work done during mediation.

This chapter presents the elements of counseling that can influence self-awareness and growth among children and adolescents. It builds on the basics and offers guidance to enhance counseling effectiveness. Children and adolescents thrive within the context of responsive relationships and these relationships are central to emotional growth. A good counselor balances the child or adolescent’s need for support and the necessity of independence in self-reflection. The fields of motivational interviewing (MI), self-determination theory, and counseling with children and adolescents are filled with specific techniques to encourage growth and change. Accordingly, the chapter highlights key elements of counselor action. Of equal importance, there will be instances in which being present, in absence of action, will create space for the child or adolescent to experience and consequently increase awareness of his or her own self—a critical foundation for growth and change.