#2

Well it’s taken me quite a while to post another entry. I’m not 100% sure why it’s so difficult to keep these things (in that I mean research journaling as a whole) up to date.

A lots been happening – I’ve been involved in the Cheshire Kooth’s training and been to another steering group meeting. At some point in time I should write a summary of all of the things I have attended before I forget!!!! A number of issues are beginning to emerge. However at the moment making sense of them into something useful may be difficult so I’ll just list things that have come to mind below:

Social Control: this is an oldy but became very apparent at the last steering group meeting. Talk went from talking about the local here and now to considering what the project is really about. Needless to say Connexions as a government funded organisation have a more political agenda – notably getting people into work. This raises some interesting questions around how counselling (or at least humanistic non-directive counselling) fits in this framework. Although there is a sense that counsellors who have worked with young people will generally be familiar with this issue others may be more challenged by this – maybe

Referring On: This is actually quite linked to the above point. The service intends to act as a portal to other services when they are required. In doing so there are some interesting philosophical assumptions about who is the expert. For instance how can you work from a non-directive stance but direct people to a drugs worker. This reminds me of some of the geldard and geldard stuff (being pro-active as a counsellor). I also feel that this is something that happens anyhow – but appears more controversial when it’s written down.

Training: Within the training group there are very different starting levels of experience. This lacking in parity proves curious in developing a training course (where do you pitch it) and raises the question of what position they are in at the end of the course.

Blogging: this seems an interesting process but raises a number of issues. Eg if I want to write something nasty about someone then it could all go wrong (I also notice I just censored myself then from swearing because others may read this). What title do you call your blog?!!! How well do you publicise it? It’s definitely different from pen and paper – I almost want to say less creative, but that may be my lack of competency – I can add piccys in here but I can’t scribble. I find doodling very useful – however I’m sure there is technology that allows that too. I think I may try and stat a sub-blog to focus on blogging as a research tool.

That’ll do for now – I will check in more regularly from now on.

a preamble

Hi there

this is the first posting that i'm making on blogger - as i intend this to be a major part of a PhD that I am conducting, it should be the first of many (however is has taken me several months to even get to this stage). I won't go into the research i'm intending to conduct yet as i'm just testing this out.

In fact lets try and post this

T