Choices: Interviewing and Counselling Skills for Canadians, 8th edition

Choices has found a home in a wide variety of professional training programs in social work, criminology, nursing, child and youth care, addictions, and psychology as well as training for professionals and volunteers in other professions whose work involves interviewing and counselling.

A continuing best seller in Canada, Choices is designed as a textbook and practice reference guide for students and practitioners that combines theory, practice examples with sample interviews, and challenging self-awareness exercises in a comprehensive yet readable format. The book includes illustrative practice examples and challenging exercises that promote skill development, conceptual understanding, and self-awareness. Throughout the book, I have included neuroscience concepts that have particular relevance for counsellors. Although framed in the Canadian ethical and cultural context, the content of the book is designed to appeal to a broad international audience of professionals.

Hallmark features of this title

• Choices promotes an eclectic approach that encourages counsellors to use techniques and ideas from various theoretical models depending on the specific needs of the client and situation, not the comfort level of the counsellor. Among the models that have heavily influenced this book's content are the following:
• Person-centered counselling, pioneered by Carl Rogers
• Trauma-informed practice
• Cognitive behavioural therapy/counselling(CBT)
• Motivational interviewing
• Short-term and solution-focused counselling
• Emergent insights from neuroscience
• Choices emphasizes cultural competence. Since everyone is unique, each with his or her own mix of values and beliefs, culture is a variable for work with all clients.

New and updated features of this title

• Significant new content:
• a. working with Indigenous peoples
• b. theory and skills for engagement with LGBTQ community
• c. enhanced material on endings
• d. exploration of listening barriers
• e. increased attention to the skills of establishing and maintaining counselling relationships
• f. implications of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Cultural intelligence which has now repositioned as Chapter 2, with increased attention to cultural identity.
• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has alerted all of us to the need to deal with the traumas caused by the residential school system. Chronically over 100 years of abuse of Indigenous children—who were forcibly removed from their families to residential schools, where they suffered physical and sexual abuse and suppression of their cultural identity—the TRC found Canada guilty of cultural genocide. Now, we have a responsibility to right those wrongs. As counsellors, we need to understand the direct link between the horrors of the residential schools and challenges still prevalent in Indigenous communities today.