Session 1: Counselling Skills

This manual has used an interactive method of educating and counselling caregivers. The LHW/other frontline workers will continue talking about mother and child health issues like before. The difference would be in telling the families that in addition to taking care of their health and nutrition, if parents also provide the opportunities of learning through play, the boys and girls will become healthier and intelligent, and will be economically more productive as an adult.

• Often it is thought that providing information about a practice will automatically result in adoption of that practice. Experience tells that it may not always happen.
  • For example, LHW/other frontline worker’s message to a mother about 4 antenatal checkups may not always result in the mother going to health center and getting her checkups. From the mother’s perspective, there may be one or several valid reasons including having no money to commute, not knowing the procedure, or simply the lack of permission from the family.
  • We know there is a solution for each of these problems but the LHW/other frontline workers will know and facilitate decision making only if she asks about existing situation in the family. The role of a LHW/other frontline workers is to facilitate adoption of healthy practices by the family and community.
• The process of knowing the context and providing workable solutions within that context is called counselling.
  • Counselling is the ‘way’ of doing this. Counselling is helping mother and family in thinking about a specific health practice, reasons why they are not able to fully adopt it, and jointly deciding and implementing the ways for full adoption.
  • This method has shown to be very helpful in difficult to change behaviors. While talking about a health and other issues, the LHW/other frontline workers try to understand the barriers and assist the mother and family in making a decision to overcome that barrier and ultimately adopt the desired behavior.

There are three simple steps that LHW/other frontline workers can follow to make the counselling effective. We call them the ABC of communication.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Explain that educating caregivers is beyond just giving information.
• Improve their skills on counselling.
• Practice using the ABC of counselling.

Presentation, role plays, discussions.

Flip chart, markers, power point slides, handouts on ABC.

2 hours