Consultee-Centered Consultation: Improving the Quality of Professional Services in Schools and Community Organizations

This volume describes the history, development, and contemporary practice of Consultee-Centered Consultation in human service organizations. Consultee-Centered Consultation is a non-hierarchical, non-prescriptive helping role relationship between a resource (consultant) and a person or group (consultee) who seeks professional help with a work problem involving a third party (client). The several examples provided in this volume from child-care programs, schools, social welfare and hospital settings show how the consultant and the consultee mutually choose and reframe knowledge about well-being, development, interpersonal, and organizational effectiveness appropriate to the consultee’s work setting to achieve the goals of the consultation process. The desired outcome of consultee-centered consultation is the joint development of a new way of conceptualizing the work problem so that the repertoire of the consultee is expanded and the professional relationship between the consultee and the client is restored or improved.