Rehabilitation Of Drug Abuses: The Implementation Of Career Counselling Programmes In The Therapeutic Communities

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou

This presentation refers to the job market integration problems that are faced by the former drug users as well as to the implementation of career guidance and counselling programmes that are run by Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals in collaboration with the author. These programmes concern:

1. the detoxification and rehabilitation counsellors education on career guidance and counselling issues for the former drug users, and
2. the provision of career guidance and counselling services for the therapeutic communities members.

Professional Development Of Persons With Thalassemia

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Demetrios Margaritis & Aikaterini Kedraka

The purpose of present study is to investigate the professional development and career management of persons suffering from thalassemia, taking into consideration the restrictions that the nature of this particular illness imposes. The psychological adaptation, the family, and the educational process influence the profile of persons with thalassemia during the first juvenile years and the adult period. Thalassemia can become a factor of persons psychological levelling (the person is identified with his illness), or become a maturity promotion factor, depending on how he will handle it internally. In other words, the internal activities can erase or maximize the impact of illness. The professional development issue is not easy for anyone. In the case of persons with thalassemia it is more complicated due to the restriction that the particular illness imposes. The existing problems of health restrict the width of professional choices, while the persons with thalassemia are faced with objective difficulties if they turn to sectors demanding natural activity or to sectors where there is time pressure for the covering of their treating needs. The result is that they end up having greater dependence from their family, fewer occasions for exploration of environment, limited perception of educational and professional opportunities that appeared and also decreased ability in the decision-making.

During the professional career planning, the young person with thalassemia needs to take into account the job factor as a way of survival and economic independence and his particular characteristics, experiences, values, interests and his expectations. However, the intense insecurity, the weakness of equivalent integration in workforce and the bias of employers are certain aspects that are considered to be under consideration in the case of persons with thalassemia. Here exists, consequently, a particularly great need for right professional orientation, so as that persons with thalassemia can turn to professional activities that will allow them to combine their abilities, interests and their aptitudes, with the essential facilitations for their correspondence in the needs of treatment that they follow.

In the present research, 107 persons (49 men and 56 women), from 19 to 30 years old took part. All of them are treated by the Units of Mediterranean Anaemia of Northern Greece. The findings of the research showed that:

1. when people with thalassemia take educational decisions are sustained in their selves and they decide on their own,
2. in professional choice criteria the first place have the personal characteristics of the person, while smaller importance is attributed to exterior factors,
3. in what they consider important and try to find in their professional activities the participants declared that after the economic profits, the next important side of work is the expression of their internal potential,
4. the big majority of sample declares that the illness do not constitute obstacle in their personal, social and professional relationships,
5. the difficulties that the disease creates in the work finding are related mainly to the frequent transfusions,
6. the frequent absences from the work place are a serious obstacle for the professional exercise,
7. young people with thalassemia believe that the employers are biased towards them.

Career counselling and cultural diversity

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou

There are many different cultural and ethnic groups in Western societies. The culturally different groups in Greece include Greeks who have repatriated from and the Muslims. Most of the people who are members of cultural minorities are concentrated in a restricted range of occupations, are more likely to be unemployed, earn less, and consequently are more likely to live poverty. Career counselors need to develop multicultural awareness and be able to focus on the needs of the culturally different that frequently have language, educational, and prejudice barriers to limited a present.

Career theory has given little attention to minority groups. Research in this area is needed to assist in the development of culturally relevant theories. The values and beliefs of different cultures should influence the way career counselling services provided. The counseling process needs to be culturally appropriate. The career counselor who is working with clients from minority backgrounds must develop an awareness of his/her own personal biases and stereotypes, and an awareness of diverse groups in our society.

Professional Decisions Of Students In Tertiary Education: The Identity Of Sex Role

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Katerina Argyropoulou & Vassilis Pavlopoulos

Psychological research has shown that, despite the subjectivity that tends to characterize decisions, decision-making signals certain models of behaviour. Sex role identity affects career decision-making, since the division of roles into masculine and feminine preserves until today the boundaries between the two sexes, as well as within the same sex. 121 students from University of Athens participated in the current research.

According to the most important results of the research:

1. individuals with a "feminine" sex role identity decide on their profession based on reason, but at the same time they take seriously into account other people's opinion, while individuals with a "masculine" sex role identity tend to use mainly reason when making professional decisions.
2. women appear to be more dependent on social background when making decisions, as compared to men.
3. individuals with an "androgynous" sex role identity are mostly oriented towards the "rationalist-independent" group of people in the process of decision-making.

Therefore, experts on career guidance should be more concerned about issues of sexes as well as matters of orientation of the role of the sex. They need to realize the inequality of two sexes and direct their attention towards female clients, in order to help women decide easily about vocational issues.

Gifted Students: A Challenge For Career Guidance Workers

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou

This article turns the interest in the professional development of gifted children and in the way that the professional orientation can help the gifted students to face their professional career. Talent is considered as a multifunctional term as the modern theories of giftedness are focused on the model of multiple-dimension. Regularly, someone could define giftedness as a person's potential for unusual records in one or more special sectors (special gift or talent), as for example in language, mathematics, chess, music - we rarely meet persons that are talented in various sectors (multi-talented). A range of particular factors that make it different from other children characterizes the professional development of gifted children. These factors could be summarized as follow:

1. Gifted children are considered by their environment that they can do everything. This attitude renders difficult for the gifted students to recognize their weaknesses, so that every sign of personal restriction is overlooked or rejected.
2. Gifted persons can accept great encouragement from their environment, so that they cannot distinguish their own values from the values that other people adopt for them. Trying place priorities, they adopt the value system of various models that considers significant.
3. Gifted persons have sometimes the tendency to take professional decisions very early, based on the fact that in certain sectors they demonstrate great abilities and have recognition and success.
4. The work, for a lot of gifted persons, is a way of expresses their selves. In that way a lot of gifted persons face conflicts between choosing professions of prestige offering them a lot of money and professions that will offer them satisfaction.
5. The decision-making process of gifted children differs from the corresponding process of the rest of students; as three groups of factors (psychological, psycho-creative and social) contribute to the professional development of these persons.

Professional counselling for gifted persons is needed to help gifted students:

• comprehend the nature of giftedness concerning the general intelligence and particular talents
• distinguish the possibilities and their weaknesses
• have complete and precise information for the possibilities of their choices in the educational system
• explore various professions in which they will have the possibility of composing their various interests
• have real experiences in various professional sectors, through provisional placements in the labour market
• comprehend those interests that are preferable to approach through a profession or through amateur activities
• realise the probability of changing career in their life and hence they should be prepared for various choices.

Finally, the school needs to help the parents of gifted children to learn how they should strengthen, guide and help their children in the development of their talents, providing them at the same time the sentimental freedom in order to plan their own life.

Career Guidance And Counselling In The New Era: Tendencies And Prospects

Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou

In this article it is attempted to be determined the tendencies and the issues that will influence the application of professional orientation and professional counseling in the direct future. Rapid changes in the labour market and the resulting needs in the professional and personal life of the working people, as well as in preparation of the young persons that are about to enter in the labour market, show that:

• The important role of professional counselling will be appreciated more and more, as the close relationship between professional life, familial life and mental health are recognized. A person will be approached as a whole.
• There will be a continuous effort of improvement of information supply services, not only in the type of provided information but also in the number of recipients and in distribution systems. The access in the information will mainly become through networks and national centres.
• There will be a growing need of response to the great disparity of schools, population and workforce. Counsellors will work with a continuously growing number of cultural different clients.
• The continuous entrance of women to labour market seems that it will cause growing needs in supply services in women, possibly not with the significance of different approach, but with the significance of adaptation of professional guidance techniques depending on the client's gender.
• The unemployment increase will cause the need of supply services to unemployed people, who will need re-orientation.
• The complexity of educational systems and labour market will probably lead to a wider application of the institution to schools.
• The structure of modern labour market leads to the need of learning business skills from the part of workers, so that they remain "employable". The professions' analysis focused on their requirements (level, degree) in concrete skills seems that leads to the creation of new models of professional orientation.
• These tendencies will have consequences in the theories of professional development, in the research of professional orientation and in counsellors' training.

The sectors in theories in which it is forecasted that to happen changes, the policy and the practices of Professional Orientation are: a) the sector of professional counselling, b) the sector of information, c) the dissimilarity of customers, d) women counselling, and e) the sector of professional orientation in school. All these changes and tendencies seems that they will have consequences in the theory and the research of professional counselling and guidance, as well as in the counsellors' training.

The counsellors of professional orientation are invaded today to add their scientific obligations following objectives as well:

• Work with dissimilar population
• Strengthen the European dimension of professional guidance
• Include the new technologies in their work
• Move to a total person development

For this purpose, various subjects related to the education, the certification and counsellor's work conditions should be regulated internationally, but also experience and knowledge of counselling in scientific level must be promoted, with international scientific associations and companies.

Professional Preparation And Integration Of Adolescents With Special Needs Perceptions And Attitudes Of Themselves And Their Parents

Nikolaos Giannitsas, Despina Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou, Evi Makri-Botsari, Demetrios Anastassiou & Aikaterini Argyropoulou

The purpose of present investigative study is to inquire into the attitudes and the perceptions of adolescents with special needs as far as their professional preparation and assessment are concerned. The conclusions of research will contribute to the better comprehension and interpretation of problems that the adolescents with special needs face with the application of school professional orientation and during their professional preparation stage, so as the essential activities for the development of more effective educational policy will be done in the future. The sample of research constituted by 215 young persons with special needs, and more specifically 62 with hearing problems, 16 with sight problems, 70 with kinetic infirmity, 41 with learning difficulties and 26 with thalassemia. The mean of age was 17, 41 years and age-related width 13 - 22.

The results of the search have shown that in the total sample, the adolescents with special needs want to continue their studies and be included into the professionally human resource. However, the perception for the professional decision leads the adolescents in professions that will safe the material earnings and means to live. While the social - human - artistic professions dominate, the technical professions and the professions of supply services are "in the inner part of brain", that is in their perception for feasible profession.

As far as the work place and the difficulties arising from the infirmity are concerned, it seems that the adolescents experience the equivalent professional and social integration as "unfulfilled dream" and that they are still intense negative stereotypes in the working place from the part of the employers. According to the answers of the adolescents, certain formal biases of employers concern:

1. productivity, efficiency and competitiveness,
2. abilities,
3. health and employers responsibility,
4. comfort in the daily contact,
5. specific problems - leave of absence from the work.

The parents of adolescents with special needs consider that the special needs of child constitute obstacle in first place in the work and secondly in relationships between sexes. In their majority also, the parents consider that the employers are biased toward the children with special needs, while they report that the subsidy of enterprises is the more powerful motive for the employers so that they hire persons with special needs.

Based on the conclusions of research, the programs of professional orientation of persons with special needs should be modified as for the methods, the processes and the strategies of evaluation. The professional counselling and guidance will help the adolescents with special needs to face the difficulties of professional choice and to realise the agreement or disagreement that exists between the ambitions and their abilities, between the level of expectations and the particular adaptation abilities that they dispose.

Apprenticeship in a sheltered environment: The case of productive sessions of KETHEA

Athanasios Tzioumpas

The forward study refers to professional training in terms of apprenticeship, in a sheltered environment, trying to achieve an assessment of the educational tasks carried out by the productive session of KETHEA in Sindos, Thessaloniki. Apprenticeship, the oldest educational method in human history, has been co tempted as a method, due to the fact that there have been structures which are separated from procedures like social production and reproduction and which have evolved into modern educational systems. This choice has resulted to several problems as concerned the quality of the educational results as well as the results of social procedures being established and "re-education" which is important for its exploitation to the entrance in employment, which have led to new investigations connected to educational methods that can deal with the requirements of a new globalized environment.

Apprenticeship's educational revival as a consignee of an educational method has been one of the results existing due to those revisions. KETHEA's workshops have been chosen because they constitute place of implementation of apprenticeship principals for the educational training of members who belong to adult teams with individualities, from an educational point of view. The fact that they have been officiating for a long time gives us the opportunity to search, through experimental methods, the implementation of general educational principals special for adults who belong to hardly aggravated social teams, as well as the advantages and the obstacles faced in education via working.

Task of this treatise is to contribute to the discussion about the abilities of alternative approximations in the educational and working sector of the entrance in employment and come-back of adults, members of social excluded groups and especially to the matter about "education in the workplace" in a structure which assures a sheltered and helpful environment. Deficiency in relevant Greek and foreign bibliography which may include equivalent researches makes the matter unknown, leads to the choice of its studying as a searching method and appoints its descriptive character. Bearing in mind these restrictions, the treatise tries to make an introduction for the issue about apprenticeship in a sheltered environment so as to promote discussion and to form the ground for further expertise research.

The treatise consists of three parts of which the first attempts a bibliographical survey for apprenticeship, as a method, with great emphasis on education/training of members belonging to sensitive social teams. The second part focuses firstly on the investigation into the social and population statistical characteristics of apprentices who work in productive workshops and moreover at the research by using qualitative analysis of the perceptions of factors who refer to the educational work done in the Productive Workshops. During the research, which took place by using the special method of focus groups, education procedures, methods and their results have been examined as they are confined by trainers and teachers, apprentices and people who have finished the apprenticeship circle.

At the third part, there is a synopsis of a discussion about the investigation results, which can offer a start of further investigation.