How to Do In-home Counseling
​for Social Workers

Why In-Home Counseling Matters

In-home counseling is a community-based intervention that continues to grow as a form of practice for families with complex and multilayered needs. Even though the efficacy of in-home counseling with distressed families has been documented, there is much to explore about the experiences of the in-home counselor. This site's purpose is to guide graduate students and new clinicians through the uncertainties of home-based clinical practice by reviewing current literature and examining some of my own lived experiences.
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Several populations receive in-home counseling services including the elderly, people with disabilities and others who suffer from a multitude of conditions that make them homebound. My work is focused on children, adolescents, and their families. 
In-home clinical practice can be described with multiple names, such as in-home counseling, in-community counseling, in-home therapy, home-based counseling, and home-based therapy.  I will use all of these terms interchangeably.

In-Home Counseling - It works!

     In-home clinical practice continues to be an alternative mode of providing mental health services and offers many advantages in treating children and their families (Stinchfield, 2004). Home-based counseling gives access to mental health services to poor children with complex mental health needs and their families (Mellin & Pertuit, 2009). It has been established that in-home counseling reduces barriers to treatment such as transportation, long wait lists at outpatient clinics, health conditions, commitments with work, and lack of child care (Adams & Maynard, 2000).

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In-home counseling has been linked to an increase in positive mental health outcomes for children and their caretakers (Fox, Mattek, & Gresl, 2013). There is a consensus in the literature that families receiving in-home services have more complex and numerous needs than those served in an outpatient setting (Karesman, Zarski, & Garrison, 1997). Mosier et al. (2001) showed that when compared to people receiving outpatient services, in-home clients have more severe emotional and behavioral needs and found that the severity of the needs was similar to the sample group receiving inpatient services.  In addition, In-home counseling services decrease out-of-home placement for youth with serious emotional and behavioral disturbances who are involved in the justice system. (Greeson, Guo, Barth, Hurley & Sisson, 2009).