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Hostile and unsafe learning environments persist for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Professional school counselors are uniquely positioned to spearhead systemic initiatives to create safe and supportive schools that combat such oppression; however, current counselor education strategies may fail to adequately prepare school counseling trainees for this role. Cognitive developmental theory offers a pedagogical framework to assist counselor educators in conceptualizing school counseling trainees’ meaning-making positions and scaffolding matched interventions to enhance preparation toward LGBTQ affirmative counseling. A theoretical overview is provided, including the relationship of advanced cognitive development to school counselor competence, as well as samples of didactic, experiential, and reflection strategies counselor educators may employ to promote cognitive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over recent years in the UK there has been growing interest in the potential for routinely collected NHS (National Health Service) patient data to be used for secondary purposes, facilitated by the potential of increasingly sophisticated electronic databases. This article is based on a critically reflective literature review which analyses the key debates pertaining to this issue. The work arose in the context of a programme of research concerning routine patient data use in neonatal care. The article includes analysis of commentary (opinion and ethical inquiry) as well as empirically derived claims. It aims to deconstruct the knowledge assumptions on which relevant research studies have been based or are proposed and it also incorporates ontological position and moral argument. Results are presented according to three predominant debates: the prevailing claim that all health research benefits civic society; the varieties of informed consent and choices open to patients regarding secondary uses of their data; and the ‘rights and responsibilities’ of patients when it comes to their data being used for research purposes. It examines the relevance of these themes specifically to the neonatal context and the implications for our own research, concluding that employing an alternative ethical model to the traditional professional one might be useful in order to provide a further perspective on the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports the findings of a study that examined why families choose to return to family therapy after their first family therapy session. The 87 families that were referred to a university family counseling center for assistance with their children's behavioral problems at school completed an author-developed survey in which they rated the influence of various therapist-related and family-related factors on their decision to return for a second session. Factor analysis of the survey data revealed that the families' positive experience of the therapist during the first session had the strongest influence on their continuation decision. The findings suggest that family therapists are not helpless victims to client attrition after the first session, but rather, have the strongest potential for influencing client decisions to come back. Specific family therapist actions for maximizing family continuation after the first session are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]