With a warm and passionate writing style, author David Hutchinson demonstrates the process of becoming a counselor and developing key skills from start to finish. He provides real-world examples and relflection activities, helping students feel less intimidated. The book covers all the key counseling skills learned in a skills/methods course, including skills for engaging a client, tools for engagement, lab practice activities, listening skills, developing empathy, and more advanced skills such as assessment, goal setting, and action planning. The accompanying DVD exemplifies many of these skills through application and the Counseling skills manual provides expanded exercises to help student master these skills.

Many counselors learn about ethics in graduate school by applying formal, step-by-step ethical decision-making models that require counselors to be aware of their values and refrain from imposing personal values that might harm clients. However, in the real world, counselors often make split-second ethical decisions based upon personal values. Values and Ethics in Counseling illustrates the ways in which ethical decisions are values—but more than that, it guides counselors through the process of examining their own values and analyzing how these values impact ethical decision making. Each chapter presents ethical decision making as what it is: a very personal, values-laden process, one that is most effectively illustrated through the real-life stories of counselors at various stages of professional development—from interns to seasoned clinicians—who made value-based decisions. Each story is followed by commentary from the author as well as analysis from the editors to contextualize the material and encourage reflection.