Finding the Family in Rehabilitation Counseling

Abstract

Family members have been recognized for their influence on rehabilitation process and outcomes. The specialized knowledge of family counseling has become part of the qualified rehabilitation counselor identity. This chapter discusses the emergence of the family ethos in rehabilitation counseling from values, to theory, to its model implications. The special identity of rehabilitation counseling is negotiated in the lived community experience of disability. Rehabilitation counseling’s science and practice is predicated on the values of human rights. The social construction of rehabilitation counseling requires a social psychology that embraces liberation. Rehabilitation counseling for families is cast as community counseling, with family as first community. The chapter explores the discipline’s identity in this new context through the applied values of the fundamental mission. It argues that rehabilitation counseling in the family has three distinct transactional expressions in identity, power, and capital.