Successful Counseling

Good counseling helps clients choose and use family planning methods that suit them. Clients differ, their situations differ, and they need different kinds of help. The best counseling is tailored to the individual client.

Give time to clients who need it. Many clients are returning with no problems and need little counseling. Returning clients with problems and new clients with no method in mind need the most time, but usually they are few.

Tips for Successful Counseling

• Show every client respect, and help each client feel at ease.
• Encourage the client to explain needs, express concerns, ask questions.
• Let the client's wishes and needs guide the discussion.
• Be alert to related needs such as protection from sexually transmitted infections including HIV, and support for condom use.
• Listen carefully. Listening is as important as giving correct information.
• Give just key information and instructions. Use words the client knows.
• Respect and support the client’s informed decisions.
• Bring up side effects, if any, and take the client's concerns seriously.
• Check the client’s understanding.
• Invite the client to come back any time for any reason.

Counseling has succeeded when:

• Clients feel they got the help they wanted
• Clients know what to do and feel confident that they can do it
• Clients feel respected and appreciated
• Clients come back when they need to
• And, most important, clients use their methods effectively and with satisfaction.

Counseling Tool Available from the World Health Organization and the INFO Project

The Decision-Making Tool for Family Planning Clients and Providers, another of the World Health Organization's 4 cornerstones of family planning guidance, helps clients and providers in counseling sessions with choosing and learning to use family planning methods. This tool is an illustrated flip chart. It offers help tailored for each type of client mentioned in the Successful Counseling table. Key information from this handbook can be found in the Decision-Making Tool, worded in a way that may be helpful for counseling.

To see the Decision-Making Tool and to download it from the Internet, go to http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/family_planning/counselling.html. For a sample print copy, write to Orders, INFO Project, Center for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA, go to http://www.infoforhealth.org/pubs/dmt/, or send an e-mail message to orders@jhuccp.org.

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