SCP Mission & ValuesMISSIONWe cultivate a “home” for all counseling psychology professionals and affiliates to connect, to collaborate, and to coordinate efforts toward creating a more just and equitable world where ALL people and communities can thrive. Our members share a commitment to a holistic psychological perspective that is strengths-based, person- and community-centered, systems-oriented, contextually aware, multiculturally inclusive, socially just, and integrative of vocational and lifespan issues. We promote this perspective within the field of psychology and in the public sector through practice, research, education and training, advocacy, consultation, and leadership. We are pleased to introduce SCP's new values. Please stay tuned for launch and integration activities planned for later this year. In the meantime, please enjoy the 2023 End of Year Reflections video that highlights our vision for living our values with unapologetic boldness. Video Direct Link: End of Year Reflections - Living Our Values with Unapologetic Boldness PREAMBLESCP has long strived to dismantle racism, uproot oppression, move toward decolonization, and advance our professional and larger society toward social justice change. Over several years, SCP engaged in the intentional work of naming, understanding, and challenging power and privilege, as it relates to oppression and harm, even within our professional home. In 2020, SCP began to widen our understanding of social justice change to include our dreams of a Counseling Psychology of liberation, where decolonization and transformation of psychology are not only aspirational, but actually attainable and therefore practiced. From 2022-2023, SCP moved to examine the values of our professional home and redefine them in ways that reflect the progression of our commitment toward liberation and our understanding that such commitment necessitates dismantling anti-Black racism. Our new SCP values center dismantling anti-Black racism as connected to liberation from all interlocking systems of oppression. These SCP values are meant to guide our work, strengthen our engagement with each other, and amplify our dreams for our counseling psychology profession as a whole. VALUESCritical ConsciousnessCounseling psychologists think critically about how anti-Black racism and other interlocking oppressions operate in the contexts in which we work. We openly acknowledge what is learned, teach accurate history, and engage in self-examination and cultural humility to look at our own biases and practice new ways of engaging for the collective good. PreventionCounseling psychologists value and center prevention of anti-Black racism and interlocking systems of oppression. We take a proactive approach to examine how anti-Black racism has and continues to shape history, including of our discipline. We adopt primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention measures in all aspects of our psychology training and work in order to respond and dismantle the systems of oppression that cause harm or create barriers to wellness. Strength-BasedCounseling psychologists use cultural humility to attend to the well-being of the whole person, including their lived experiences, through frameworks that are contextual, intersectional, and strength-based. AdvocacyCounseling psychologists are bold in our efforts to dismantle mechanisms, systems, and structures of injustice as we engage in advocacy and social justice praxis that addresses anti-Black racism and other interlocking oppressions embedded within our own profession (including within the education and training of counseling psychologists). Counseling psychologists’ advocacy is direct and occurs across the individual, institutional, and structural levels, including local, state, and federal policy. Flexibility and AdaptabilityCounseling psychologists are change agents who work through innovation, collaboration, flexibility, and adaptability as they shape-shift structures that contribute to the oppression and subjugation of marginalized people. CollectivismCounseling psychologists honor the collective group that encompasses personal, professional, and societal groups to which we identify with. Counseling psychologists prioritize the sharing of power and engage in collaboration over competition. Accountability and Repairing HarmCounseling psychologists aim to identify and correct biases at the individual, institutional, and structural levels, by taking self-accountability, acknowledging cultural missteps and harm—especially against marginalized communities—supporting others in taking accountability, and offering paths to reconciliation and reparations where possible. LiberationCounseling psychologists actively work together and toward freedom from oppression for all people. Liberation is an action oriented psychological construct that only has meaning when we enact it. Liberation requires engagement in advocacy and social justice toward personal and collective freedom goals. Liberation unites us in the vision of a better world and is the proactive effort to make it a reality. HealingCounseling psychologists promote healing of the self and others, where we strive to know ourselves first and enhance personal and collective wellness. Counseling psychologists understand that short-term problem management and survival are sometimes necessary, but long-term healing and thriving are the goal. View an Archived version of this page here.
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