Guidance Counsellor

The position of guidance counsellor encompasses, in particular, responsibility for providing assistance, advice and guidance as well as evaluating the psychological functioning, personal resources and environmental conditions of students in the youth and adult sectors. He or she participates in developing and maintaining active adaptation strategies in order to enable students to make personal and professional choices suited to their personal characteristics and to their environment, while on their educational path.

• The guidance counsellor participates in developing and implementing an academic and vocational guidance service, while respecting the academic and administrative requirements of both the educational institutions and the school board.
• He or she evaluates students (individual or group meetings) with respect to their interests, aptitudes, abilities, personality, professional experiences and personal needs, using appropriate methods such as psychometric tests, direct observations and information provided by teachers and other school resources and, where applicable, parents.
• He or she evaluates individually, as part of an individualized education plan, a student's mental disorder, psychological functioning, personal resources and environmental conditions, including a student with a handicap or social maladjustment as well as a student suffering from a mental or neuropsychological disorder attested to by a diagnosis or an evaluation conducted by qualified personnel.
• Through individual or group counselling sessions, he or she helps a student to carry out a self-analysis and to build an overall image of himself or herself, explore and clarify his or her situation and determine personal and professional goals, grasp the information received, understand, assume and overcome his or her personal and social problems.
• He or she provides support to students in their search for means aimed at enabling them to overcome the difficulties associated with their educational profile and their social and employment integration.
• He or she provides information and advice to parents on the measures required to provide help and guidance to the student in defining and carrying out his or her educational and career objectives.
• He or she contributes to the screening and identification of students experiencing difficulties, using an approach focussing on prevention and intervention; he or she works with a multidisciplinary team to draw up and review a student’s individualized education plan by including his or her action plan in the plan, if necessary; he or she participates in defining intervention objectives and means; he or she works with other team members to ensure concerted and coordinated interventions and assess the achievement of objectives.
• He or she advises management staff, prepares expertise, evaluation, briefing and progress reports and formulates appropriate recommendations to support decision making.
• He or she acts as a resource person for the guidance-oriented approach, he or she gives advice to school resources, provides them with documentation, suggests activities that enable them to identify variables contributing to the student's personal, academic and professional progress.
• He or she plans, organizes and delivers academic and vocational information activities dealing with program requirements, professions and market trends; he or she coordinates and assumes the activities of the documentation centre related to his or her specialty, ensures the purchase and update of specialized reference materials (magazines, CD-ROM, software or others) and provides support to the students and staff using them.
• He or she establishes and maintains relationships and collaboration with representatives of the labour market and of other organizations that could be involved in providing academic and vocational guidance to students.
• He or she prepares and updates files according to the standards associated with the practice of the profession and the rules defined by the school board; he or she prepares progress notes or reports as well as end-of-process and follow-up reports on his or her interventions.

• Be a member of the Ordre des conseillers et conseillères d’orientation du Québec.