Helping-skills model

Domain III · Humanistic, existential & experiential · Robert R. Carkhuff, Berenson · 1969

What it is

The helping process runs in the phases below. Each phase is the helper's contribution matched to the helpee's response. The five "levels of helping" place the helper's performance on one ladder: 1.0 nonattending, 2.0 attending, 3.0 responding, 4.0 personalizing, 5.0 initiating.

Format

• Session count and format
• The previews give no fixed session count or session plan. The model describes a process, not a manualised course of sessions.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Training formats are better documented. One counsellor programme ran 5 weeks, 30 hours, with discrimination and communication testing before and after. Its graduates then trained peers for 20 hours.
• Version followed: the four-skill Carkhuff Helping Model as set out in Robert R. Carkhuff, The Art of Helping (HRD Press; the January 2009 printing listed on O'Reilly, ISBN 9781599961798; the edition number was not shown). Its chapter structure is taken from that edition's table of contents and previews. Empathy level definitions come from Carkhuff & Berenson, Beyond Counseling and Therapy (2nd ed., 1977), as…
• What it is. A skills model and training programme for any helper, not a separate school of psychotherapy. It is also called the human resource development (HRD) model or Carkhuff Helping Model. Carkhuff and Berenson derived it from Rogers' core conditions: they turned empathy, respect/warmth and genuineness into rated levels, then into teachable skills. Responding and initiative came first; attending and…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Section text not opened.
• The focus drifting to you.
• Rewards the helpee doesn't actually value.
• Advice-giving that implies the helpee can't cope.
• Interrogation. Alternate questions with responses.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.