Humanity in Homelessness: A Social Justice Consultation Course for Counseling Psychology Students

Abstract

Students in counseling psychology have cited a desire for more opportunities to engage in social justice within their programs. Pressing national issues, such as homelessness, offer an opportunity to use transferrable psychology skills, including consultation, to address and prevent systemic oppression, while affording students necessary training. This paper describes a doctoral level counseling psychology course on social justice consultation and evaluation. The students and faculty undertook a consultation project with the city’s Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention (OHPI), where they applied a strengths-based social justice consultation model to the goal of providing recommendations to prevent homelessness. First, we set the context for homelessness in the United States and [university town]. We then outline the data consultation process and preparation/presentation of a formal report for OHPI officials, including successful outcomes from the consultation. Finally, we discuss lessons learned from the consultation project and recommendations for students and faculty who plan to implement social justice consultation into their graduate programs.