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In:Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and withholding in institutional interaction
Edited by Fabienne H.G. Chevalier and John Moore
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 255] 2015
► pp. 83–114

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Avoiding giving advice in telephone counselling for children and young people

Empowerment as practical action

 | Loughborough University, UK
 | Queensland University of Technology, Australia
 | University of Queensland, Australia
Published online: 27 March 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.255.03but
Kids Helpline is an Australian 24-hour telephone counselling helpline for children and young people up to the age of 25 years old. The service operates with the core values of empowerment for clients, and the use of child-centred practices,one aspect of which is a non-directive approach highlighted by the avoidance of overt advice giving. Through analysis of a single call to the helpline, this chapter demonstrates how counsellors actively manage and minimise the normative and asymmetric properties of advice in the course of helping clients develop options for change. In doing so we illustrate the practical relevance and enactment of abstract institutional policies and discuss the interactional affordances of institutional constraints on practice.
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Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Ekberg, Katie, Stuart Ekberg, Lara Weinglass, Anthony Herbert, Johanna Rendle‐Short, Myra Bluebond‐Langner, Patsy Yates, Natalie Bradford & Susan Danby
2022. Attending to child agency in paediatric palliative care consultations: Adults’ use of tag questions directed to the child. Sociology of Health & Illness 44:3 ► pp. 566 ff. DOI logo
Antaki, Charles & Steven Bloch
2020. Advising without personalising: how a helpline may satisfy callers without giving medical advice beyond its remit. Sociology of Health & Illness 42:5 ► pp. 1202 ff. DOI logo
Bloch, Steven & Geraldine Leydon
2019. Conversation Analysis and Telephone Helplines for Health and Illness: A Narrative Review. Research on Language and Social Interaction 52:3 ► pp. 193 ff. DOI logo
Monzoni, Chiara M. & Markus Reuber
2015. Linguistic and interactional restrictions in an outpatient clinic. In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 255], ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo

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