Reconciling the 'Psycho-Social/Structural' in Social Work Counselling with Refugees

Refugees can experience significant distress as a result of structural inequalities encountered when resettling in host societies. For those refugees whose complex needs are not able to be adequately addressed through broader interventions, support in the form of counselling may be required. Nonetheless, social workers in counselling roles may inadequately attend to the impact of these inequalities on refugees' emotions, sense of self and capacity for agency, and a model of practice that embraces this is required. In this article, I seek to develop a model of practice for counselling refugees that acknowledges the deep interrelationship between psychological well-being and structural inequalities. Drawing on insights from Australia, I extend the scope of a psycho-social approach to incorporate understanding of socially structured feelings and explore two contemporary Australian practice models: the trauma/recovery model and the social model of healing. Each makes important contributions to work with resettling refugees but loses the contribution of the other. Here, I bridge the models through a psycho-social/structural model that recognises the complex interrelationship impacting refugees' well-being, acknowledging their socially structured feelings. To fail to recognise this interrelationship is to risk rendering invisible, or even exacerbating, the sometimes harmful effects of resettlement.