A.C.A. @ N’Awlins

By Marc Verhoeve, Cybertraining Consultant

A stern-wheeler announces its arrival at the Riverwalk dock. A street jazz-trio performs on Bourbon Street as the exquisite aroma of Cajun cuisine wafts through the French Quarter. This is New Orleans [pronounced N’Awlins], the host city for the 2002 American Counseling Association Annual Conference.

ACA is actually comprised of 18 professional helping associations representing fields such Aging, College Counseling, Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues, Rehabilitation, Group Work, Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values, Social Justice, and Career Development. From March 22 to 26, the 2300 delegates were besieged with a plethora of sessions, from 42 day-long Learning Institutes to 485 workshops. The conference is primarily U.S.-based with only two foreign presenters, Dr. Eun-Mi Lin from Jeon-ju University, South Korea, and yours truly.

The most prevalent workshop topics were:

• private practice ethics and legalities
• healthcare and eldercare
• career-change and rehabilitation
• college university issues and research
• treatment and prevention
• diversity and ethnicity
• cybercounselling

My personal area of professional interest is the field of cybercounselling. The South Korean presenter [mentioned above] provided a fascinating snapshot of the exponential growth of cybercounselling in that country. Cyber-ethics in U.S. states has become a hot issue. Career practitioner state licencing organizations are now regulating out-of-state web-based counselling; for example, a California-based cybercounsellor may be constrained by the licencing board and insurer from web-counselling a client in Texas. Ironically, these legal constraints do not yet exist in international cybercounselling.

These workshops compete for delegates’ time with 70 exhibit-booths and an incredible amount of professional networking and the Annual Meetings of ACA’s 18 sub-associations. I shall be discussing some of the exciting new web-based cybercounsellor’s support products in my September e-column [Cybercounsellor] hosted on OSCA [Ontario School Counsellor Association website

The March 2003 ACA Conference will be in Anaheim, California.