Researchers have discussed the crucial effect that information technology (IT) personnel have in a variety of industries. However, a knowledge gap exists in analyzing the effect that interactions between higher education IT personnel and their customers (learners, faculty, and staff) have on the ability to learn, teach, and achieve. The current…

Brown states that "paraprofessional counselors can and do contribute meaningfully to the improved adjustment of their clients." In this article he carefully reviews the evidence for this assertion, takes a hard look at the state of research, and points to the problems yet to be solved. (Author)

Due to the high cost of professional services for the emotionally disturbed it is often the case that community-based aftercare programs for this population rely heavily on the use of volunteers to provide direct supportive functions. This study used a structured interview to attempt to describe the perceptions of volunteers of the informal…

A brief description is presented of a Counseling Adjunct Program which has been a successful application of one of several possibilities available to counseling agencies that wish to employ nonprofessionals in direct service positions. (Author)

What's happening in training programs on campus? And where do the graduates go? True and Young's pioneer work in the Center for Human Services Research provides many of the answers. (Author)

This demonstration of enduring positive consequences lends further credence to the view that nonprofessionals, under appropriate conditions of recruitment, training, and supervision, have much to offer in human service helping activities. (Author)

Author discusses some areas of responsibility professionals have for and to the paraprofessionals who work in the mental health field. (Author/CB)

The state-trait model was applied to empathy training, which was seen as resulting in a change in trainees' state empathy level. Successful trainees were differentiated and predicted on the basis of young age, high level of trait empathy, and high perception of the empathic functioning of the trainer. (Author)

Systematic Human Relations Training (SHRT) is predicated on the basic assumption that there are certain core helper-offered conditions that are necessary in a helping relationship, i.e., empathy, respect, warmth, concreteness, genuineness, self-disclosure confrontation, and immediacy. This, however, is only part of the model. The second basic…

The application of the triadic model of therapeutic intervention was tested within a community-based program that trained indigenous nonprofessionals as behavior change agents to 42 youngsters, aged 11-17. These adult buddies attempted to influence their youngsters through their relationship and through the contingent use of social and material…

Lay personnel indigenous to the inner city were selected and trained in helping and human relations skills as functional professionals. In turn, they utilized an internship principle in conducting similar training programs for 63 essentially unselected hard core unemployed. (Author)

With budgets limiting counseling staffs and an increased need to retain students, a more effective method of providing services is needed. The objective is to bring paraprofessionals to the point where they can recruit, screen, select, evaluate, promote, train, supervise, and administer their own programs. (Author/PC)

This paper describes the current status of a helping skills program designed to train mental health paraprofessionals in relationship-building skills. Six skills were identified as the basis of the training program: (1) understanding the need to be a helper; (2) using effective nonverbal behavior; (3) using effective verbal behavior; (4) using…

Factor analysis of a test battery for nonprofessional mental health workers is reported. The battery measured cultural interests, attitudes toward job attributes, extraversion, helping person qualities, social class, and interest in science. When nonprofessional child aids were compared with nonprofessional controls, aids showed stronger cultural…