Counselling, psychotherapy or psychological counselling? The profile of therapy in educational guidance

The childrens and young peoples assistance law authoritatively pointed out more dearly, what counselling in educational guidance services offered by the youth welfare can be. Then a difference ist to be made between psychotherapy as a free offer made by educational guidance services and psychotherapy as a service offered by the medical care system and financed by the health insurance. Important criteria for discrimination can be deduced from the purposes of the childrens an young peoples assistance law and from their interpretations. The law demands a stronger pedagogical orientation, and it even demands an orientation towards underprivileged groups dealing with everyday matters. An analysis of the current practice confirms this trend. Meanwhile the educational guidance services have developed an independent methodology. Much more than the therapy offered by the medical care systems this therapy is marked by pragmatic purposes and a generic orientation. This therapy is getting more and more profiled on the basis of the childrens and young peoples assistance law still is lacking however a theory bringing it forward as well as systematics studies of their effects.