About Your Speaker
Jenny Ong has been working with families since she graduated with a Masters of Arts in Pastoral Counselling in 2008. In her earlier work with St. Andrew’s Lifestreams, she conducted micro skills training with participants from hospitals and social service sectors. She also offers marriage preparation programmes for couples and pastoral care modules for churches and ministry leaders. Jenny is also a certified facilitator for both The Virtues Project® and Signposts for Building Better Behaviour. Besides her counselling degree, she has also completed her Post Graduate Certificate in Therapeutic Play Skills with College of Allied Educators and is currently an Intermediate Theraplay Practitioner with The Theraplay Institute. Jenny now works in a crisis shelter for family violence and utilizes creative modalities in her work with both young and mature clients.
Course Overview
Interviewing and counselling are concerned with client stories. Those in the helping profession hear different stories — tales of depression and abuse, anger or grief, and sometimes even narratives of strength and courage. The interviewer’s task is therefore to listen carefully to the clients’ stories and learn how they think, feel, and act as they do. At times, simply listening carefully and empathically is enough to produce meaningful change.
Listen, with intention, with love, with the “ear of the heart.” Listen not only cerebrally with the intellect, but with the whole of feelings, our emotions, imaginations, and ourselves. Esther de Waal