Working with involuntary clients, an analysis from the probation counsellors professional competencies perspective

The persons under supervision of the probation services represent, together with those with custodial sentences, the perfect illustration of the concept of involuntary client, i.e. the one who ends up benefiting from the help/assistance of a specialist not as a result of his own decision, and/or awareness of the necessity of such help, but as a result of a legal mandate. This aspect determines and explains the specific profile of this category of beneficiaries of the intervention activities and programs in the correctional space. In accordance with this reality, the specifics of professional relationship and of the work carried out by the probation counselors with the supervised persons are also configured. This text aims to present on one hand the obvious and less obvious implications of nonvolunteering and on the other hand, some of the dimensions of the professional competencies of probation counselors required in such a type of professional interaction. A series of aspects are followed that describe the adequacy of the competencies of probation counselors to the contents of the professional role, for creating awareness opportunities of their own problems by the offenders under supervision, and developing individual resources through which the development of motivation for change and the dynamics of the transition from the state of involuntary client to that of a motivated and involved beneficiary in the helping process, take place in order to make a prosocial change of behavior.