SNS Counselling: Issues Discovered Behind the Scenes

Kei Kudo|Chairperson, NPO Sodateage Net
The original Japanese article was published on 23:24, October 12, 2017

(Paylessimages/Aflo)

Together, Nagano Prefectural Board of Education and LINE Corporation offered a counselling service using LINE (a messaging application that is extremely popular in Japan) targeting junior high and high school students. The result of this counselling service was announced.

• Extremely popular LINE bully counselling, far exceeding a year of telephone counselling (LINEの「いじめ相談」が超好評。電話相談1年分を軽く上回る) (Huffington Post) (Japanese only)

• Students flood to LINE for counselling – More than a year’s counselling in two weeks (ＬＩＮＥなら…生徒悩み相談続々 ２週間で１年分超える)(Asahi Shimbun Digital) (Japanese only)

Number of counselling exceeded expectations, which reaffirmed the penetration of communication using SNS among junior high and high school students and the big role SNS can play in consultations on their anxieties and problems.

Counselling is comprised of a consulter, a responding counselor and a method of consultation. I went to the Kansai Counselling Center that assumed the counselling role in this project, and saw the actual site of LINE counselling. Moreover, staff from NPO Sodateage Net was also involved in this counselling . Given such circumstances, I would like to look at the issues that I encountered behind the scenes of SNS counselling.

In normal counselling, the consulter and the counselor communicate in a privacy-conscious environment. There, language mediates the two and the counsellor also uses sight, smell, hearing and others to sympathize with the consulter’s feelings. In telephone counselling, the counselors come closer to the consulter mainly through voice, feeling its tone and atmosphere.

However, SNS counselling was a totally different story. The counselors sat around a big table with a laptop computer equipped with a system for SNS counselling ready in front of them. In addition, there was a PC for the manager who oversaw the counselors.

When it is time, they receive consultations. A counselor raises her hand to show that she will take the message, and the manager confirms. This is when a LINE counselling begins. If there are no particular problems, the only sound that resonates in the counselling room is the sound of touch typing. This is probably not what you see in ordinary counselling rooms. It took some time to get used to the silence.

There were other thought-provoking sights. In normal face-to-face counselling, the details of the counselling usually cannot be overheard. If the counselor has a headset, telephone counselling cannot be overheard either. However, in SNS counselling, although a certain amount of speed is required in responding, the counselor is not in the sight of the consulter. Therefore, if a counselor is at a loss at how to respond, the counselor can consult another counselor sitting next to her or get advice from the manager. This was very new for me. Sometimes, counselors can be quite lonely counselling single-handedly. Receiving feedback on a counselling is quite difficult – in order to receive feedback, the counselling has to be conducted with a supervisor or, with the consulter’s permission, the counselor has to either audio record or film the counselling, transcribe and receive feedback, and so forth. However, in SNS counselling, counselors can discuss or exchange opinions among themselves. The counselor can also ask for some time to the consulter, and do some research such as searching on the Internet.

This SNS counselling project is a rare project in Japan and thus attracts a lot of attention. It seemed that it was also a first time for the counselors to counsel using SNS. Even if they use LINE in their daily lives, they had never used it for counselling. The basic presumption is that the client is right in front of the counselor. Thus, the counselors cannot be free from stress and anxiety when they receive consultations in situations in which “they cannot see the clients”, “there is no vocal communication”, and “they do not know who is behind the screen.”

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to applaud the courage and the challenging spirit shown by the counselors who volunteered to support the children as SNS counselors. This is because it is exactly the people themselves that enter the profession of counselling that know the difficulty of and the responsibility in continuing to receive consultations on suicidal ideation and bullying, better than anybody else.

Note: Here, I have referred to the counselling staff as “counselors”, but the qualifications for applying to this post are as follows:

• Licensed psychological counselor (Psychological counselor certified by Kansai Counselling Center, clinical psychologist, industrial counselor, etc.）

• Psychiatric social worker or a certified social worker
  

• Those enrolled in Master’s Degree or PhD program majoring in psychology
  

• Persons with experience in supporting the young (support towards those suffering from social withdrawal, non-attendance, etc.）
  

• Ex-teachers
  

One hour from the start of counselling, all ten counselors were counselling. Suicidal ideation, desire to die; distress over extracurricular activities and families; concerns on sex and entrance exams…concerns and anxieties of junior high and high school students are diverse and deep. There were some consulters who confirmed that their identities are not revealed. I also saw counselors discussing, “This consulter says that this is a counselling for a friend, but isn’t it really the consulter’s trouble?”

Of course, there were counselling that seemed to be have been made as a trial. But contrary to my expectation, there were hardly any consultations that were made for fun. Rather, there were many consultations that made me imagine the seriousness of the problems faced by adolescents that they cannot consult about with their family or friends, and their pain in not being able to find solutions including solutions to concerns particular to adolescence.

The articles I have introduced above also showed that LINE counselling is extremely accessible for junior high and high school students. If the research project of the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) can be budgeted, SNS counselling may be conducted in several local communities. However, there are many problems before this can actually be implemented.

First is training of human resources. There are no or very few counselors who have the experience of SNS counselling. Even if the counselors are qualified, the difference between SNS counselling and normal counselling must be more than they can imagine. Actually, this is what the frontline counselors say, that SNS counselling is totally different. It is not something that can be immediately conducted once it has a budget and qualified counselors are gathered. The counselors must receive a proper training.

Professor Yasushi Sugihara from Kyoto University became the academic adviser of the Kansai Counseling Center, and the Center prepared a manual and conducted a prior training. While specific cases are not yet adequately accumulated in Japan, the quality of what the Center prepared was more than sufficient to mitigate the anxieties of the first-timer counselors, to understand the core of SNS counselling, and to learn ways to avert risks.

In the future, in addition to training conducted along a manual, training to understand the special characteristics of SNS counselling, training conducted with anonymized actual SNS counselling cases, training on the operation of chat tools, and role play training using a chat system, will be called for. Satisfactory measures to support counselling will be possible by having well-experienced counselors and counselors who make daily use of SNS gather together.

This does not only apply to MEXT, but if the local authorities and local boards of education begin SNS counselling without appropriating sufficient time and money on nurturing counselors and prior training, there can be a huge chaos in the frontline. This is a point I would clearly like to raise.

The second point is status guarantee of SNS counselling specialists. Regardless of who organizes SNS counselling, local authorities, schools or the private sector, if the budget is on a one-year basis and the continuity is not secured, the status of the specialists cannot be guaranteed and as a result, it will be difficult to start developing specialists over several years. In this uncharted territory, in implementing SNS counselling, we have to discuss status guarantee also in order to avoid the unstable working conditions that already exist in the frontlines of “inter-personal support” and “counselling support”.

Finally, the extent that can be covered by SNS counselling must be decided. We have found out that SNS counselling is extremely accessible for children. However, there is a limit to what can be solved through counselling. In addition, the viability of connecting a SNS counselling with telephone counselling or face-to-face counselling is unclear. As a first door in receiving the children’s worries and anxieties, SNS counselling seems to be able to play a sufficient role. However, it does not seem to be able to solve all problems yet. That is, existing counselling, including telephone counselling and face-to-face counselling, was not unsuitable for children, but was unsuited as first doors.

SNS counselling will probably become more widespread in the future. If the budget for telephone counselling and face-to-face counselling is reduced for numerical reasons and SNS counselling is launched, the problems of the children cannot be solved unless there is somewhere that can receive the children who came through the first door. Having had a glimpse of the wide variety of worries and consultations that flood in, I believe that building a comprehensive system including and not limited to SNS counselling is effective in receiving and solving children’s problems, also from the viewpoints of prevention and social investment.