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Joint Special Virtual Issue between Journal of Counseling & Development
and Counselling & Psychotherapy Research

Counsellors in Solidarity: Centering Personal Development within
More Just Social Environment

BACP Research Conference, 14-15^th May 2021

Editors’ Welcome

We are delighted to extend the collaboration between the two Associations to our respective journals. We are also mindful that the joint virtual issue coincides with the second BACP Research Conference during the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic. For this reason, we wish to put across a message of solidarity in sharing global knowledge from studies that positioned counselling and psychotherapy within a broad social justice framework, especially in developing, implementing, and evaluating approaches for vulnerable and marginalized client groups. We very much hope that the virtual issue will stimulate new ideas and debate during the conference and beyond, as we all strive to position our field to meet the needs of the post-pandemic world.

The proposition that counsellors and psychotherapists must pursue social change might seem untenable or even misguided, as historically much of our work has centered on convalescing the given individual’s circumstance.  But upon reconsideration, the quest for personal development and wellness is always bound up in the total of our shared situatedness as people who reside in a complex world of other living and non-living entities. As such, counselling is always in some way a social exercise.

The contents of this special virtue issue were chosen to highlight this value of empowering the individual, while simultaneously ameliorating more just and contributory social environments.  Articles include topics ranging from the deleterious effects of current global pandemic to longstanding issues pertaining to economic, ethnic, and other forms of persistent inequality. Our choice in highlighting these topics is not cynical, but rather to illustrate that even the most socially turbulent situations can be supported by counselling and psychotherapeutic services.  Even further, these articles demonstrate the impressive capacity of humans to endure and even thrive, especially when their inner resources are amplified in ways that are complimentary to more just social opportunities.  

Professor Matthew Lemberger-Truelove, JCD Editor

Professor Panos Vostanis, CPR Editor