Cultivating Compassionate Care for Homeschoolers: The Homeschool Counseling Network’s Core Values in Action
If you have been following along with our recent blog posts, then you know BIG changes have been going on at the Homeschool Counseling Network over the past year.
- Collaborations and partnerships with like-minded homeschool nonprofits, small businesses, individuals, and organizations ✅
- Public speaking engagements/community education opportunities ✅
- Nonprofit status ✅
- 501(c)3 Status ✅
- Acceptance into VELA Founders Network ✅
- New Mission, Vision, and Core Values ✅
HCN’s Core Values
In our previous blog post, we shared HCN’s revamped Mission, Vision, and Core Values.
Compassion.
Why This Value: Advocating for the unique needs and strengths of homeschooling families helps promote a greater understanding and acceptance of the homeschooling lifestyle within the mental health community, bridging the gap between homeschooling families and providers.
Knowledge.
Why This Value: Homeschooling families lack access to mental health professionals who are knowledgeable of homeschooling culture, the homeschooling lifestyle, and the unique needs of homeschooling families. A dual-path educational approach, where homeschooling families are provided knowledge, resources, and support about mental health and professionals are simultaneously provided education about homeschooling families’ culture and mental health needs, is vital to bridging the gap between these two communities.Â
Empowerment.
Why This Value: No one thrives in isolation. Providing homeschooling families with a supportive community that includes both compassionate mental health professionals and peers who share their values, understand their distinct experiences, and are responsive to and supportive of their needs helps empower families to be successful on their home education journey.
In today’s post, we want to go a step further and explain how we plan to demonstrate our core values. Furthermore, we will illustrate our action plan for putting our core values to work.
How We Will Demonstrate Our Core Values
Compassion.
- Fostering a culture of empathy, understanding, and support among our community of therapists and homeschooling families.
- Continuing to recruit knowledgeable and compassionate professionals to join our growing provider directories to increase access to empathic mental health care for homeschooling families
Knowledge.
- Offering evidence-based continuing education opportunities and training for mental health professionals to better equip them to provide compassionate, informed, and understanding care to homeschooling families including but not limited to ethics, cultural competency, and best practices.
- Â Providing affordable mental health educational resources and tools (i.e., webinars, blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, downloadable content, etc.) for homeschooling families to increase their confidence and help them thrive in their home educational pursuits
Empowerment.
- Providing a safe, non-judgmental space (i.e., group forums on our membership-based platform) for homeschooling families to explore their challenges and celebrate their successes with supportive peers who share their values
- Fostering a community where homeschooling families can connect with like-minded peers and access knowledgeable, compassionate professionals, resources, and guidance to empower them Â
Accountability in Action
To further illustrate our commitment to helping bridge the gap between the homeschooling and mental health communities, the Homeschool Counseling Network has devised the following action steps to help ensure follow-through and accountability of our stated core values.
- Compassion – HCN screens all providers for a compassionate attitude towards the homeschooling community.
- Knowledge – All team members are required to complete HCN’s cultural competency training.
- Empowerment – HCN will help, offer resources to, or refer any homeschooling family that comes to us, regardless of their situation.
Unfortunately, research on homeschooling and mental health is scant. HCN is currently developing a metric to assess compassionate attitudes towards homeschooling, The Compassionate Attitudes Towards Homeschooling (CATH) Scale.
The CATH is designed to evaluate attitudes that reflect compassion, understanding, and support for homeschooling families and the unique educational environment they provide.
Mental health providers are asked to indicate on a Likert-type scale how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement. (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). Questions are organized into the following five categories:
- empathy and understanding of the homeschooling experience
- openness and support for diverse education
- choices recognition of challenges and needs
- positive regard for homeschooling outcomes
- self-reflection and compassionate growth
HCN is connecting with researchers who specialize in the homeschool community, such as the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) and the Homeschool Hub to help gather data using this metric which will in turn help us further our mission.
Meeting Homeschoolers Where They Are
In mental health, we have a common motto: Meet the client where they are.
This key counseling concept means a provider adjusts his or her approach to align with the client’s current emotional state, needs, and level of understanding. It emphasizes creating a safe, supportive environment where the counselor listens to the client without judgment and works within their existing perspective, rather than imposing an external agenda or expectation.
For example, if a client is struggling with a lot of emotional distress, the counselor might focus on providing comfort and validation before attempting to explore deeper issues. If the client is more open to change or has specific goals, the counselor can introduce more structured interventions.
The idea is to build rapport and trust by respecting the client’s pace and readiness for change, ensuring that they feel understood and empowered throughout the counseling process.
But do you know what else it means? It means when helping a client set achievable goals for therapy, the counselor takes into account the influence of a client’s culture, background, beliefs, and values while simultaneously encouraging the client to grow and respecting the client’s autonomy.
That’s a mouthful to say and juggling at its finest in practice. Let’s put it in simpler terms.
In the context of homeschooling, this concept could mean a counselor acknowledging the diverse reasons a family may choose homeschooling, such as concerns about school environments, a desire for flexibility, or the need for specialized learning support. It involves understanding the unique challenges homeschooling parents and students may face, like balancing home life with education, managing multiple grade levels, or coping with learning differences.
For example, a counselor might recognize that a parent feels overwhelmed by the demands of homeschooling and might offer guidance tailored to their current stress level, teaching skills, or support network. They wouldn’t impose an idealized version of what homeschooling “should” look like at best (or at worst discourage them from homeschooling altogether), but would instead work with the parent and child where they currently are in their homeschooling journey, helping them build strategies and solutions that fit their needs and goals.
It’s all about being empathetic, flexible, and patient in understanding the circumstances surrounding homeschooling and adjusting counseling methods to best support the family.
Putting It All Together
Homeschooling families -to best serve you, we need your help!
We want to hear from YOU, our audience of fellow homeschoolers out there in the community. In the upcoming months, we will post surveys, questions, polls, and articles to the Homeschool Counseling Network’s Public Facebook Resource Sharing Group. We humbly appreciate your participation and will use your feedback to help guide our future outreach efforts.
Be sure you do not miss a blog post or vlog post by signing up for our newsletter or joining our Facebook group.
Blessings,
Kimberly Bennett, LPC
Founder/CEO, Homeschool Counseling Network Inc.
This website is not a professional counseling website and nothing here should be construed as professional counseling advice. Although Kimberly Bennett, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor, she is not your counselor, and no counselo
