Community Oriented Intervention to Empower Lay Counsellors

A community psychology intervention presents an opportunity to extend, expand and tailor psychological services to the needs of communities. Seven female lay counsellors aged between 40 and 50 years underwent training in basic counselling skills within a community psychology paradigm, in an impoverished community in South Africa. Working within a qualitative paradigm, interviews were conducted with five participants using a semi-structured interview schedule developed by the researchers. Results indicated that participants were empowered in all three dimensions of psychological empowerment, viz. the intrapersonal, the interactional and the behavioural components. The community's overall skills pool had increased through the training of the counsellors.